The median income of families in the United States doubled and the country’s Gross National Product more than doubled (in constant dollars) between 1950 and 1970. Yet crime, drug use, racial unrest, demonstrations and environmental degradation prompted doubts in this period about the easy equation of economic growth and social progress, and there emerged a sense that economic indicators did not suffice to measure progress, and a renewed interest in social measurement more broadly conceived. In the mid-603 this interest was expressed in calls for the development of %ocial indicators”, “social accounting”, “measuring the quality of life”, “monitoring social change”, and “social reporting” (Sheldon & Moore, 1966), interest which was reflected in the research and statistical activities of scholars, research institutes, and governments in many countries and in the work of international organizations such as the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (UN. Secretariat, 1976). The term “social indicators” became widespread following the publication of the book of that title edited by Raymond A. Bauer (1966). Seeking to find ways to assess the social impacts of the space program, Bauer brought together several social scientists whose work came to be focused on questions of social measurement and its use in assessing the state of society relative to national goals. Albert D. Biderman showed that pertinent statistical indicators were available for only about half of the goals identified by the President’s Commission on National Goals (1960). Bertram Gross, in a chapter on social systems accounting, called for the development of comprehensive models describing the structure and performance of entire social systems. Such models might serve to counter what Gross called the “new Philistinism”, the tendency of hard measurements, usually in dollars, to dominate equally important, but softer, measurements. At about the same time, the President’s Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress called for the development of a system of social accounts (1966, pp. 96-97); and Senator Mondale proposed a council of social advisors and an annual social report from the President to Congress. Under the supervision of Assistant Secretary William Gorham and his successor, Alice Rivlm, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare produced Toward a Social Report (1969), an influential statement of the need for social indicators, written chiefly by Mancur Olson. The report said, “We have measures of death and illness, but not measures of physical vigor or mental health. We have measures of the level and distribution of income, but no measures of the satisfaction that income brings” (p. xiv). The volume defined social indicators as “in all cases . . . direct measure(s) of welfare”, and contrasted them with the more readily available measures of government expenditures and other “inputs” of various kinds (crime rates versus number of police officers, for example) (p. 97). This distinction, roughly that between outputs and inputs, has been influential but controversial, because it is neither exhaustive nor unambiguous. The output of one social process may be the input to another. For