Trends in Wage and Income Distribution Under Gorbachev, Analysis of New Soviet Data
Abstract
Deputies to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies in Moscow in 1989- the first real Soviet parliament since 1918- expressed strong interest in issues of welfare and poverty. As a result, the country's national statistics agency released unprecedented new series on the size distribution of wages and income in the country, including the distributions by republics. This paper applies a simple nonparametric statistical estimation technique based on the Kolmogorov- Smirnov test to fit the new Soviet data to a lognormal distribution, thus making it possible to estimate Gini coefficients for wages and incomes nationally and by republics. Analysis of the estimates shows that wage inequality in the Soviet Union has increased during the Gorbachev era, and that both wage and income inequality are higher in the poorer, Southern republics of the USSR than in the North. The paper also concludes that illegal (unreported) private income exacerbates these same trends.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 1991
- Accession Number
- ADA274458
Entities
People
- C. Gaddy
- M. Alexeev
Organizations
- Duke University