Social Consumption Funds, part of the consumption fund of socialist society intended primarily for the joint satisfaction of the socio-economic requirements of all members of society. The social consumption funds express the relation between society as a whole, the work collectives and each individual member of society vis-a-vis that part of the national income designed for personal consumption. Their purpose 325 is to ensure that the socialist state influences in a planned way the formation of the structure of the people’s expenditures and consumption in the interests of the gradual merging and levelling out of the socio-economic status of all members of society. Representatives of all social groups have a radically new opportunity to receive, through the social consumption funds, a corresponding education, acquire access to culture, develop their abilities and thanks to this can occupy a position in socialist production and society corresponding both to their abilities and to the interests of society. The social consumption funds ensure free education and improvement of one’s skills, free medical care, benefits, pensions, student stipends, payments for holiday leaves, free and discount accommodation at sanatoriums and rest homes, the bulk of the costs of sending children to preschool establishments, and other grants and benefits. In the USSR, grants, benefits and free service provided by the social consumption funds are financed primarily through expenditures of the state budget of the USSR. A relatively small portion is financed from the socio-cultural and housing fund of enterprises ( associations) (see Economic Incentives Funds), from the centralised social security funds or social maintenance funds for the collective farmers, etc. During the building of socialism and communism, a range of requirements fully or partially provided for from the social consumption funds changes. The forms in which these funds are distributed also develop. This is due to the greater opportunities of developed socialist society to satisfy more fully the constantly growing requirements of the working people. In perspective, the existing social consumption funds will evolve into communist funds, and their functions, structure and forms of distribution will change. They will satisfy the requirements of people which will become much broader and there will be greater collective involvement in satisfying the requirements.