The U.S. Government produces $150million worth of statistics a year on everything from coal productionto babies. Many of these figures form the basis of the President’sannual Economic Report, a key aid to businessmen and Governmentplanners in measuring the nation’s economic health. Now a task force ofexperts has shown how this mountain of figures, plus a number ofcritical new ones, could be used by social scientists to prepare anannual report that would measure the quality of American life—not howmuch but how good.
This is the basic argument of a farewell gift to President Nixon by theJohnson Administration: a 198-page volume called Toward a SocialReport, prepared under the direction of Mancur Olson, an economist withthe Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Two years in themaking, the study charges that while the U.S. has—in theory, atleast—learned how to regulate its economy, it has been ill-prepared topredict riots or determine its social needs and goals. Toward a SocialReport contends that systematically marshaling “social indicators”would provide the nation with a working tool for the setting of socialpriorities.
The study, for example, points out that despite statistics showingdramatic progress in medical care over the past decade, the amount oftime the average American can expect, to spend in a sickbed or aninstitution has remained static. Illnesses stemming mainly fromcigarettes, alcohol and a rich diet have undercut the advance.
Second Marriages. Although vast sums are spent by the Government oneducation, the report says, relatively little is known about whetherthe money is really contributing to better learning. And for all thetalk of rising crime rates, there may have been an actual decrease inthe harm that crimes do to people. Religious leaders worry about therising divorce rate. Still, notes the report, the percentage of thepopulation that is married has risen 7.5% since 1940, largely becauseof the increase in second marriages.
With becoming modesty, the study acknowledges that such measurements arecrude and tentative. The social sciences are still new disciplines withexpanding boundaries. According to Social Psychologist Raymond Bauer ofHarvard, “Our hang-up is that we don’t have a model for the socialsystem anywhere as precise as what the economists have for the economicsystem.” Nor do the social scientists have a measurement for socialvalues akin to the dollar, although one possible theoretical unit iscalled the “utile,” used by economists to weigh the price people wouldpay to avoid the sonic boom of an SST, for example, as against theeconomic benefits that the plane would give them.
Systems Analysis. The HEW document joins the academic optimists whocontend that the long-run benefits of better social calculation can beas immense as those of economic accounting. Already, the report says,tools are being developed for measuring such basic concerns aspowerlessness, job satisfaction, freedom of expression, and even theobtuseness of bureaucrats. Eventually, these and other measures mightmake possible a hardheaded “systems analysis” of the efficacy ofgovernment programs.
Like all scientific knowledge, the statistics in a social report couldbe misread or manipulated to justify dubious policies. Or they couldsimply be ignored. But the U.S. Government’s use of the social sciencesis becoming increasingly sophisticated, and it has some impressivelegislative support. Minnesota’s Senator Walter Mondale has introduceda bill that would set up a social report and a presidential Council ofSocial Advisers. “In the social field,” he says, “the decent intentionsof a decent politician were once good enough, but that is no longertrue.” A leading supporter of Mondale’s bill last year, and a member ofthe academic group that advised the task force, is Nixon’s newurban-affairs adviser, Daniel Moynihan. Statistics can berevolutionary, he points out in a new book, Maximum FeasibleMisunderstanding; all too often, it is only when a problem can becounted that citizens begin to think it counts.