The Material Conditions of Family life (An Analysis of Family Life in Ashkhabad)

Abstract

Experience has shown that analysis of general indices of the growth of production and sales of consumer goods does not give economists working on problems of domestic life, people's welfare, and standards of living an exhaustive picture of the subject, of the qualitative changes that have occurred in the requirements of Soviet people. A thorough study of these vital problems calls for the use of concrete data characterizing family budgets and the material conditions of life of various population groups. An analysis of such factual material would show which of the people's needs are developing and which are disappearing, and just how the structure and forms of the people's consumption are changing; it would help in more accurately determining realistic ways of eliminating more rapidly the gap between the conditions of life of various groups of the population and the developing communist way of life.