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Soviet Income Maintenance Policy for the 1970s*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Extract

The ‘rediscovery’ of poverty in the 1960s in the United States and the rising welfare expectations all over the world have sharpened a continuing debate about the relative merits of a variety of proposals for dealing with want. A discussion of the Soviet approach may provide a useful perspective for us and for other countries. Income maintenance programmes in the Soviet Union, as they had developed up to 1968, have been studied by this author. In this paper, an attempt is made to bring developments up to date, focusing on what they suggest in regard to policy for the 1970s.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

1 Madison, Bernice, Social Welfare in the Soviet Union, Stanford, 1968, pp. 4963, 75–6, 195–210.Google Scholar

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3 In 1972, on the official exchange, 1 rouble is worth $1.21.

4 The estimate of 75 roubles was arrived at on the basis of the statement that in 1975, this wage would amount to 98 roubles (Brezhnev, Leonid, Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Moscow, 1971, p. 51)Google Scholar, this being 30 per cent higher than what it was in 1971 (see reference 2, p. 193).

5 See reference 2, p. 192.

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17 Feshbach, op. cit. pp. 25–6.

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