Jewish Economies (Volume 1) by Simon Kuznets

Author:Simon Kuznets [Kuznets, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781412842709
Goodreads: 14317090
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

a. Mining shifted from col. 2 to 3.

b. For the labor force the category is “building construction and public works.”

Sources:

Lines 1-6: Robert R. Nathan, Oscar Gass, and Daniel Creamer, Palestine: Problems and Promise, Washington Public Affairs Press, 1946, p. 150.

Line 7: see Table 18, col. 4.

Line 8: Daniel Creamer, Provisional Estimates of Israel’s National Income, 1952-1953, Central Bureau of Statistics and Falk Project for Economic Research in Israel, Jerusalem, Mar. 1955, Special Series no. 29.

Another change in relative income per worker between 1936 and 1953-54 occurred in construction: the relative (to the total community average) drops from 107 to 52. The estimate for 1953-54 may be too low since we have matched income in the contract construction sector with labor force engaged in “building construction and public works.” Yet this change may be real; in 1936 Jews engaged in that sector may have been at relatively skilled levels, the lower levels having been occupied largely by Arabs (note the relatively low level of per capita income in that sector in 1936 among the non-Jews). In 1953-54 Jews provided both the skilled and unskilled labor, with the majority of the latter recruited from the recent immigrants. Here again a test of the finding would require further analysis.

One other aspect of the findings for 1953-54 deserves comment. The inter-industry differentials in income per worker are rather narrow, taking into account the size of the various groups within the total labor force. The sum of positive and negative deviations from 100 (i.e. from equality to the countrywide average), weighted by percentages in the labor force is 1,602 (signs disregarded), or, divided by 100, 16.0. The corresponding figure for 1936 (the Jewish community) is 23.6, which shows that inter-industry differences in income per worker have narrowed over the period. More important, in many other countries in the world the inter- industry differentials, particularly between agriculture and other pursuits, are much wider than in Israel in 1953-54. These narrow inter-industry differentials are probably a major factor contributing to the marked equality in the distribution of income by size within Israel, an observation repeatedly made by visitors. Direct sample data on size distribution, that will become available in the near future, should provide a basis for measuring this “equality.”

(iii) We come now to the last, and perhaps most intriguing, aspect of the income estimates for the Jewish community in Palestine and Israel: the use of the income and of other resources made available from the outside. Table 22 presents a condensed picture of the allocation of domestic income and other resources in two years: 1936 in Palestine and 1953 in Israel. It would have been desirable to prepare such estimates for a whole series of years, before and after independence; but it is not possible to do so, except for 1952 and at a later date for 1954 (the latter to be inserted when the figures become available).

Table 22 Allocation of Income Produced and Other Resources Between Consumption and Capital Formation, Jewish Community in Palestine, 1935

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