Toward a Social Report: A Review Article

Abstract

Social indicators, social accounting, Council of Social Advisers, social reporting-the popularity of these notions suggests an idea whose time has come. In recognition of previous comings and goings of this idea, certain caution is warranted in prognosticating new era of rationality in social planning. The President's Research Committee on Social Trends, appointed by President Hoover in 1929, was very active for the next three years. Their 1933 report, Recent Social Trends in the United States, runs 1,568 pages in the published edition, with an associated monograph series of 13 volumes. The Director of Research, William F. Ogburn, was responsible for dozen special issues and articles in the American Journal of Sociology giving annual reports on social changes. Thirty-six years later the government has issued new report, this one labelled Toward to indicate a preliminary step toward the evolution of regular system of social reporting. The chief parallel with the previous effort is that both were completed approximately three years after the initial presidential request, and only became available to the public after the White House was occupied by new president of another political party. The new report is physically more modest effort, running to 101 pages, with no associated publications. A half-page of acknowledgments and two-page listing of an advisory Panel on Social Indicators contrast with the 13 pages of fine print acknowledging assistance on the 1933 report. These quantitative comparisons of the reports are intended not as serious criticism but as quick illustrations of the differing character of the two efforts. In particular, the recent effort was not that of an adequately