INCOME-DISTRIBUTION IN THE USSR IN THE 1980S

In 1989 Soviet authorities released unprecedented new data on the size distribution of income in the U.S.S.R. in the 1980s, including the di stributions by republics. With the goal of providing a benchmark for e valuating the effect of current and future economic reforms on income distribution in the former Soviet Union, this paper estimates inequali ty measures for the new data. The estimation uses a simple nonparametr ic technique based on the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to fit the Soviet da ta to a lognormal distribution. The results suggest that, for income f rom official sources, (1) inequality in the Soviet Union as a whole de clined throughout the 1980s-both before and after Gorbachev's accessio n in 1985, and (2) income inequality was greater in the poorer, southe rn republics of the U.S.S.R. than in the north. While the inclusion of unofficial (unreported) private income would probably reinforce the s econd of these two trends, its effect on the first cannot be determine d on the basis of available information.