URBAN RENTS

Estimates of urban and rural housing rental payments are summarized in this appendix. I begin by estimating 1913 urban housing rents, which I then use as a benchmark for the time series figures. The estimate for 1913 is taken from an earlier paper, but I summarize its derivation briefly here. S. G. Strumilin, working with survey data from 87 Russian provinces prepared by the Ministry of Finance in 1914, estimated that the number of two-room equivalent apartments in the Russian Empire in 1913 was 3.92 million. According to Strumilin (from a 1910 study by the Central Statistical Committee), the average annual urban rental rate in 1910 was 224 rubles, which I convert into 1913 prices by applying the rental price index from Petersburg to yield an average 1913 rental rate of 264 rubles. This I multiply by 3.92 million apartments to yield a total rental figure of 1035 million rubles in 1913.

A rough check against budget studies of factory workers in Baku, Petersburg, and Kiev reveals that this estimate of urban rental payments is not unreasonable. The average Petersburg worker in 1912, for example, had a ratio of rental to retail expenditures of around 27%. For families of Moscow workers, the ratio was 19% in 1918. According to my figures, the overall ratio of urban rental payments to urban retail expeditures was between 21% and 26% in 1913, and this range is consistent with budget data.