Income versus living expense in USSR during the 1980's and 1990's
score:6
I can share some experience of my own. I lived there from the 1950s to the 1990s.
Salaries (in roubles) slowly increased. In the 70s a worker without special qualification could make about 100 roubles/month. Workers with high qualifications were payed more. An average teacher/doctor made 100-200. My starting salary as a researcher in the early 80s was 130, then it grew (with my rank and qualification) to 200+ in the end of the 80s. A full university professor made 400-500 and this was one of the highest salaries.
Most people rented apartments from the state, at a moderate price (the main problem was availability, not the cost). The price of a 3-room apartment grew from about 10 roubles in 1970s to 20 roubles per month in 1980s. It was possible to rent privately but this was expensive and few people could afford this.
To rent an apartment from the state one had to a) qualify, that is to prove that you had less than 7-9 square meters per person, this norm depended on the city, and b) once you qualified, you were registered, and waited in line, sometimes for 10 years, sometimes more. Factories and other institutions had dormitories, with shared rooms, sometimes small separate rooms and common, shared kitchens and bathrooms. I know some people who lived all their life in these dormitories.
The result was that grown up children frequently lived with their parents and grandparents.
Most of the salary of most people was spent on food. Public transportation was cheap (3-5 copecks, 1 rouble is 100 copecks). A good new TV could cost 300 roubles, and a car several thousand. Nevertheless there was a huge shortage of cars. One could stay in line for many years.
Important notice: medicine and education (on all levels) were free. Moreover, students with good grades were paid a stipend.
All people who worked for the state a sufficient number of years (more than 10 if I remember correctly) qualified for retirement at a certain age, paid by the State. The State also paid for disability benefits.
Of course I do not mention income from illegal business which grew quite a lot, especially in the 80s. For example, US-made jeans was a common item of illegal trade in the 1980th. You could pay 100 roubles for a pair of genuine Levy Strauss or Wrangler, average monthly salary!
Upvote:1
A few points in addition to the excellent answer by Alex.
While salaries have gradually risen, prices rose as well, so it is not obvious that the real wages rose in 1960-1980.
The relative salary size was very different from what a Westerner would expect. E.g., workers made more than engineers (ostensibly, "because education is free and the state has to recover the expense"). The low salary of physicians drove medicine to be a largely "female profession". The "skill gradient" was huge: while junior researchers were paid less than workers, professors were paid twice that and Academy members twice again.
The state tried to suppress private enterprise, but "personal services" were really expensive. 1:1 tutoring for college admission started at R5/hour. A visit to a Professor of Medicine, while officially free, would really cost you, and one was expected to "compensate" physicians with presents (joke: a note on a doctor's door: "I don't drink flowers and chocolates"). Privately sown dresses, fixing cars...
Often alcohol was used a currency between individuals, especially when dealing with unskilled labor.
Upvote:2
You can find measures of personal income and disposable income in the 1989 CIA paper, USSR: Estimates of Personal Incomes and Savings (I had to look in the Wayback Machine to access the paper). The tables there cover the period 1967-1987.
More post
- 📝 What's the difference between Kosovo's & the Confederate States of America's declaration of independence?
- 📝 What is the oldest verifiably correctly translated written work?
- 📝 Who was the first human to survive a vertical launched rocket flight?
- 📝 Why did Mongolia split in two when they declared independence?
- 📝 How much contact did Sub-Saharan Africa actually have with the rest of the world since the beginning of civilization?
- 📝 How much damage was USSR already capable of doing by the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis?
- 📝 Why didn't Indonesians/Indian Ocean traders bring marsupials to Asia and placental mammals to Australia/New Guinea?
- 📝 From where did Aryans originate?
- 📝 What was Marcus Aurelius's view of and interactions with Christianity?
- 📝 What is 'real socialism'?
- 📝 Was there a love affair between Faustina the Younger and Avidius Cassius?
- 📝 Did ash rain in cities near Nazi concentration camps?
- 📝 How large could king Arthur's kingdom have realistically been?
- 📝 What computer was used in 1958 for handwriting recognition by Dimond?
- 📝 How old was Murasaki Shikibu when she married her second cousin? And why did she marry him?
- 📝 Did Charles IV of Spain legally change Spanish succession law in 1789?
- 📝 What was the price of gunpowder in Victorian England
- 📝 What language does this look like?
- 📝 Were there any political checks on the U.S. executive during their covert support of the military junta of Pinochet?
- 📝 Did Lucian of Samosata make this joke on purpose?
- 📝 Have there been "mechanical paintings" in real life?
- 📝 Are there any documented cases from ancient or medieval times of someone escaping captivity by cross-dressing?
- 📝 Why do all my history books divide Chinese history after the Han dynasty?
- 📝 Has there ever been a case where a tribe/nation tried to reclaim the land they had left before?
- 📝 What is the citation-system for the Linear B tablets?
- 📝 Did the Weimar governments publish revelatory WWI documents?
- 📝 Must scopes have revealing reflections?
- 📝 Has mercantilism ever been successful?
- 📝 Why are there so few Greeks and Macedonians in India?
- 📝 Why didn't the Pakistani military try to gain Kashmir from India in 1971 instead of launching an offensive in Rajesthan?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Income versus living expense in USSR during the 1980's and 1990's
- 📝 How did the Apollo-Soyuz test project affect the relationship between the USSR and USA during the cold war?
- 📝 What was the income tax rate in the UK during WWI and WWII?
- 📝 How did the USSR manage to innovate in an environment characterized by government censorship and high bureaucracy?
- 📝 Why didn't the US and USSR jam each other's early-warning radar?
- 📝 Why weren't pickled fruits and vegetables part of (European) rations during the Age of Sail?
- 📝 During the Great Depression, did the US Army do a study involving paying people to dig a hole and fill it back up?
- 📝 What was the liquor that was based on petrol which was produced in the USSR during the Second World War?
- 📝 Why did the Arabs start the 1973 War during Ramadan, and did it affect their performance?
- 📝 What is the small country between USSR and Mongolia in 1935?
- 📝 When and how did the West lose its dependency on the USSR for Titanium?
- 📝 Which fruits and vegetables did Chinese migrants introduce to Australia during the gold rush?
- 📝 Why were schoolchildren in the USA taught virtually nothing about the Holocaust during the fifties and sixties?
- 📝 Why weren’t the Dutch and Belgian borders fortified with wire, trenches, mines, etc., as it became clear Germany would invade during WW2?
- 📝 What goods did Germany trade during the Weimar Republic, and with whom?
- 📝 What changes happened in law enforcement and criminal trials during the Nazi era in Germany?
- 📝 What did European people of the 5th century AD eat during spring and what was the availability?
- 📝 What were the operating principles of Japan's MITI during the 1950s and 60s?
- 📝 In what way and to what extent did the USSR exert influence on Mongolia?
- 📝 Percentage of the draft pool that were conscripted during WW2 and Vietnam
- 📝 How close were the living standards of India compared to England during the medieval period?
- 📝 When did Abu Bakr agree to lower taxes for the Arabs living under the rule of Byzantine and Sassanid Empire?
- 📝 How was the relation between the Ottoman Empire and Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro during the Second Balkan War?
- 📝 What are the highest and biggest half-timbered buildings built during medieval era?
- 📝 What happened to all the scholars and scientists of Western Rome during the barbarian invasions?
- 📝 How common was drug abuse and related deaths in the USA during the conservative 1950s?
- 📝 What was the border regime between Poland and Czechoslovakia like during the 1970s and 1980s?
- 📝 Nazism and Jewish persecution awareness during the WW2 years
- 📝 Inflation rates in Spain and Portugal during the 16th century
- 📝 Was there a constant 'fear of the bomb' in the Soviet Union and America during the Cold War?