ABSTRACT
In former Soviet Central Asia there are particularly acute struggles to establish or sustain stable political systems and growing economies. This chapter assesses some important patterns revealed by recently released data from the Soviet censuses of 1979 and 1989 and the continuities made clear from a look back at the census of 1926. Current ethnic group differences have strong roots in the past. The census of 1926 was particularly valuable for examining these roots, as it included very detailed occupational data by ethnicity. The chapter examines evidence for Uzbekistan alone, but it points to patterns that were present throughout Central Asia. In Russia only eight per cent were employed in agriculture in 1989, down from 14 per cent in 1970. Aggregate gender differences in the nonagrarian labour force can be summarized using the commonly applied index of dissimilarity. This measure is equal to half the sum of the absolute differences between the distribution of males and females.
