America's Social Health

Putting Social Issues Back on the Public Agenda

Marque-Luisa Miringoff, Sandra Opdycke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780765616739
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317477013
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Calling for a fundamental change in the focus of public policy in America, this book paints a vivid portrait of the nation's social health. Miringoff and Opdycke clearly show that social progress has stalled and the country's energies need to be directed at critical domestic issues in the years ahead.The authors propose a new agenda for monitoring America's social well-being built around sixteen key indicators of American life, such as infant mortality, teenage suicide, health insurance coverage, and affordable housing. They maintain that social conditions, like economic conditions, must be constantly monitored in order to have a clear sense of "how we are doing" as a society.The book builds on the work of the Institute for Innovation in Social Policy and argues that there needs to be a greater visibility for social issues - and a closer link between social reporting and public action - to better address the nation's social problems. It considers the critical role of the media in advancing public understanding of social issues, and examines important advances in the community indicators movement and international social reporting. Eye-opening and compelling, the book is a provocative centerpiece for policy debates and national initiatives on today's crucial domestic concerns.

Part I

Social Reporting in American Life

Chapter 1

We Can Do Better: Toward a New Public Dialogue on Social Health

What is the measure of a good society? How can we tell if social conditions are getting better or worse? We all have opinions about this country’s social well-being, of course, but it is often difficult to have a rational debate on the subject because the facts that should ground that debate are difficult to come by. In many respects, the information commonly available to the American public provides a very incomplete picture of the social state of the nation.

It is strange that this should be so in a country that puts such a high value on quantification. In our highly technical society, numbers give credibility. If we can measure a phenomenon, it seems real to us, and in many aspects of our national life, we have become accustomed to statistical reporting that is timely, precise, and widely accessible.

The economy is a perfect example. On any given day, we are deluged with highly specific information about the economy. As a result, most Americans have a fairly clear impression of how the economy is doing and can make judgments about its performance. Although people respond to the data based on their own perspectives, they generally do so in the context of widely known indicators such as unemployment and inflation.

We receive even more detailed information about the minute-by-minute ups and downs of the stock market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the NASDAQ Composite Index, and Standard & Poor’s 500 Index are all updated continuously throughout the day. Every form of media—newspapers, television, and the Internet—provides frequent information on these indexes, as well as on individual stocks. These data are so widely disseminated that even people with few investments of their own have a general sense of how the stock market is doing.

Sports are also monitored closely in our society. In baseball, for example, the New York Times publishes fifty-nine separate statistical indicators for each league, and updates them daily during the season. Such detail makes for knowledgeable fans and lively commentary. Because of these widely available statistics, anyone and everyone can discuss with infinite precision and variety the strengths and weaknesses of the various leagues, the teams, the batters, and the pitchers. This pattern holds for most major sports, local and national.

Even our weather is closely monitored. With temperature readings, dew-point averages, barometric pressure levels, temperature-humidity indexes, pollen counts, and wind velocity rates, we have a reasonably clear picture of what the weather will be like each day and how it is expected to change during the week. There is even a specific television station—the Weather Channel—and on its website viewers can check on climactic conditions anywhere in the world, from Topeka to Tokyo, with daily, often hourly, updates.

Politics, too, is often treated as something of a statistical sport. Through innumerable public opinion polls, we keep track of shifts in how the public feels about maj or political controversies of the day. We also monitor the relative standings of leading politicians, following the rise and fall of their approval ratings and measuring their perceived strengths and weaknesses. Long before Election Day, we are likely to know who is in trouble and who is a shoo-in, which races have already been won, and which will be cliffhangers.

Yet despite all this tracking of trends and patterns, the American public does not receive much regular information about trends in the nation’s social well-being. We hear about separate events, but the type of systematic coverage that shapes our view of economics, politics, and sports is rarely found in social reporting. This inadequate attention to the social side of our national life makes it more difficult to engage in informed public dialogue and diminishes our capacity to address the problems that face us. We need to do better.

What Economics Can Teach Us

The economy is perhaps the most carefully measured aspect of our national life, and the way it is monitored offers a model for what we might achieve in the social sphere. We learn about the details of the economy and how it is faring through frequent and widely publicized indicators. Here is one example of economic reporting, from the New York Times:

Employers added only 121,000 jobs [last month], the government reported yesterday, indicating that the economy was slowing under the combined weight of high energy prices and rising interest rates.

But the government also reported that hourly wages rose at their fastest pace in five years, while the unemployment rate remained at 4.6 percent. This suggests that the labor market remains tight and may yet spur high inflation.

The disparate data underscored the uncertain economic situation facing the Federal Reserve as it ponders whether to continue raising interest rates over the summer to cool the economy further or whether it is time to pause.¹

This brief account tells us a great deal about how we conceptualize our economic life in this country. Illustrated in these few lines are many of the strengths of the nation’s economic reporting system and a clue to how we envision our own role in relation to the economy.

• Timeliness. The economic measures in the example above are timely and up-to-date. Most of the statistics are scarcely one month old, providing an opportunity to evaluate where the economy stands at the moment. This permits an assessment of how to correct or improve the current economic situation and suggests there is some urgency underlying our knowledge and understanding of these issues.

• A fixed andfrequent reporting schedule. Like nearly all economic measures, the indicators in the selection above are published on a fixed timetable—at least quarterly and usually monthly. The frequency and regularity of this schedule allows for predictability and a sense of control over the flow of information.

• Multiple measures are examined together. In the example given above, the measures discussed include job growth, energy costs, interest rates, hourly wages, unemployment, and inflation. At other times, some combination of durable goods, factory inventories, retail sales, gross domestic product (GDP), housing starts, consumer confidence, leading indicators, balance of payments, or other economic assessments may be grouped together. This analysis of numerous indicators in relation to each other—an approach that is common in economic reporting—provides a complex and nuanced view of current trends, rather than a single-issue perspective.

• A focus on the whole. Although significant attention is given to specialized issues such as interest rates, job creation, or inflation, economic reporting tends to keep a bird’s eye view on the whole. The economy, with all its strengths and weaknesses, typically remains the central focus. This means each economic measure is a “true” indicator, since it is an effort to take a sampling or reading of the whole. Indicators are always the tip of the iceberg. We know each measure is incomplete, but we also know that each provides a part of the larger vision and gives insight into the broader universe that is the economy.

• A sense of direction. The concern that the economy might be “slowing,” in the example cited above, reflects a focus on dynamics and movement. The economy is presented not as a stagnant entity, but rather as a body in motion. Implicit in this orientation is the idea that those who track the economy must be vigilant, continually assessing where we stand and where we are headed.

• The routinization of intervention. The tone of the excerpt makes clear that the economy is viewed as an enterprise that is at least somewhat within our control. Agencies such as the Federal Reserve Board have the power and the responsibility to monitor the economy and apply remedies rapidly and systematically, either to “tweak” the situation or to initiate significant changes in policy. And the various economic indicators are the signals that trigger these actions.

These multiple strengths are fundamental to our nation...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Social Reporting in American Life
• Part II A Closer Look: Key Indicators of Social Health
• Conclusion
• Notes
• List of Tables and Graphs
• Appendix A Selected Social Indicator Data Over Time
• Appendix B Technical Note on the Index of Social Health
• Appendix C Technical Note on the National Survey of Social Health
• Index
• About the Institute
• About the Authors