A Measure of Quality

The U.S. Government produces $150 million worth of statistics a year on everything from coal production to babies. Many of these figures form the basis of the President's annual Economic Report, a key aid to businessmen and Government planners in measuring the nation's economic health. Now a task force of experts has shown how this mountain of figures, plus a number of critical new ones, could be used by social scientists to prepare an annual report that would measure the quality of American life--not how much but how good.

This is the basic argument of a farewell gift to President Nixon by the Johnson Administration: a 198-page volume called Toward a Social Report, prepared under the direction of Mancur Olson, an economist with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Two years in the making, the study charges that while the U.S. has--in theory, at least--learned how to regulate its economy, it has been ill-prepared to predict riots or determine its social needs and goals. Toward a Social Report contends that systematically marshaling "social indicators" would provide the nation with a working tool for the setting of social priorities.

The study, for example, points out that despite statistics showing dramatic progress in medical care over the past decade, the amount of time the average American can expect, to spend in a sickbed or an institution has remained static. Illnesses stemming mainly from cigarettes, alcohol and a rich diet have undercut the advance.

Second Marriages. Although vast sums are spent by the Government on education, the report says, relatively little is known about whether the money is really contributing to better learning. And for all the talk of rising crime rates, there may have been an actual decrease in the harm that crimes do to people. Religious leaders worry about the rising divorce rate. Still, notes the report, the percentage of the population that is married has risen 7.5% since 1940, largely because of the increase in second marriages.

With becoming modesty, the study acknowledges that such measurements are crude and tentative. The social sciences are still new disciplines with expanding boundaries. According to Social Psychologist Raymond Bauer of Harvard, "Our hang-up is that we don't have a model for the social system anywhere as precise as what the economists have for the economic system." Nor do the social scientists have a measurement for social values akin to the dollar, although one possible theoretical unit is called the "utile," used by economists to weigh the price people would pay to avoid the sonic boom of an SST, for example, as against the economic benefits that the plane would give them.

Systems Analysis. The HEW document joins the academic optimists who contend that the long-run benefits of better social calculation can be as immense as those of economic accounting. Already, the report says, tools are being developed for measuring such basic concerns as powerlessness, job satisfaction, freedom of expression, and even the obtuseness of bureaucrats. Eventually, these and other measures might make possible a hardheaded "systems analysis" of the efficacy of government programs.

Like all scientific knowledge, the statistics in a social report could be misread or manipulated to justify dubious policies. Or they could simply be ignored. But the U.S. Government's use of the social sciences is becoming increasingly sophisticated, and it has some impressive legislative support. Minnesota's Senator Walter Mondale has introduced a bill that would set up a social report and a presidential Council of Social Advisers. "In the social field," he says, "the decent intentions of a decent politician were once good enough, but that is no longer true." A leading supporter of Mondale's bill last year, and a member of the academic group that advised the task force, is Nixon's new urban-affairs adviser, Daniel Moynihan. Statistics can be revolutionary, he points out in a new book, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding; all too often, it is only when a problem can be counted that citizens begin to think it counts.

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