the segment of the population employed in the national economy, including persons engaged in private subsidiary farming. In the USSR, the economically active population is the aggregate of all persons engaged in paid or income-producing, socially useful labor.

The statistical criteria of the economically active population vary in different countries primarily according to their inclusion of economically dependent family members working in agriculture or in handicrafts. In some instances, the economically active population includes persons who do not participate in production but who have unearned income. There exists in the statistics of a number of capitalist countries, for example, the concept of the economically independent population, which comprises all persons living on their own income, including those with unearned income and those with pensions.

The percentage of the economically active population is a function of the proportion of working-age persons in the total population (a demographic factor) and of the extent of their employment (an economic-organizational factor). This percentage ranges from 35 to 50 percent in certain countries; in the USSR, it is approximately 48 percent. It is always higher for the male segment of the population. The percentage of the economically active population is considerably larger in socialist and developed capitalist countries than in developing countries. In 1970 the world’s economically active population comprised more than 1.5 billion persons.