This book is written for people who are skeptical and uneasy when
they hear politicians, economists, and reporters tell Americans
"You're never had it so good" as they recite lists of leading
economic indicators. The Social Health of a Nation, as its subtitle
indicates, tell us, "How America is Really Doing." The facts in
this book confirm what many American know intuitively - they are
not better off now, not with income inequality at its worst level
in fifty years, not with more and more Americans dropped from
insurance rolls, not with thousands of Americans feeling the
effects of corporate downsizing, not with real wages on a long term
decline. This book provides the facts to see the rest of the
picture, the condition of the American national spirit that can
never be revealed by economic indicators alone. It also provides a
forceful argument that, without the social side of the picture,
Americans are in the dark about the nation's progress.
This book as not an ideological tract, however. It's purpose is
portrayal, not prescription. Not everything reported is bad news;
an entire chapter is devoted to indicators of improving social
performance. Because it does not advocate, for example, a return to
big government or any quick-fix solution, this book will be
welcomed by readers from all parts of the political spectrum or of
no particular political persuasion. It will appeal to concerned
individuals from business, government, clergy, and other
professions, and to those who represent no interest group. It will
also be widely used as supplemental text in a variety of sociology,
economics, and political science courses.
The Social Health of the Nation is written by two sociologists,
Marc and Luisa Miringoff. Marc is currently the Professor of Social
Welfare Policy at Fordham University Graduate Center, and the
founder and Director of the Fordham Institute for Innovation in
Social Policy. Luisa is Professor of Socioogy at Vassar College,
where she has served as Department Chair and Director of its Urban
Studies Program. Both earned Ph.D. degrees from the University of
Chicago.
Since 1987, Marc has headed a research team to develop the Index
of Social Health, a nationally recognized social barometer that has
been featured in ten New York Times and four Washington Post
articles. This index has commanded increasingly large electronic
and print media attention because of its powerful presentation of
trends in family life, income, health, housing, child poverty, and
other social indicators of everyday life in the United States. The
Social Health of the Nation will include the previously unreleased
and very newsworthy Index for 1998. But it will contain much more.
Influenced by the effectiveness of the Index of Social Health, in
the summer of 1996, the Ford Foundation approached the authors with
a plan. Alarmed by a lack of government attention in the United
States to monitoring the nation's social health, the Foundation had
a vision of creating a book building on the Index of Social Health,
to show what is needed to advance this field and deepen its impact.
To that end, the Foundation provided financial assistance for the
book's development by funding Miringoff's Fordham Institute for
Innovation in Social Policy to convene a twenty-five member team,
the Working Group on Social Indicators, including nationally known
pollster, Daniel Yankelovich, and Director of Research and Vice
President of CNN, Judy Milestone. Each member of the Working Group
was motivated to improve social reporting in the United States.
They came from the media, universities, and government,
representing fields as diversse as law, medicine, sociology, and
economics.
The vision of the Ford Foundation, with the assistance of this
working group, has now become a reality in The Social Health of the
Nation, a nine chapter book written by Marc and Marque Luisa
Miringoff. This book does show the other side of the Official
Portrait of How America is Doing, providing comprehensive coverage
of improving, shifting, and worsening social performance. It fills
in the blanks after all the economic indicators are posted.
The book contains surprises, the same kind that have been made the
yearly release of the Social Index of Health a subject of media
attention for twelve years, an index whose 1998 figures will be
released exclusively in this book. While some of the indicators
will shock, other will give reason for hope, as we see evidence of
improved performance in unlikely places. For those whose
livelihoods and well-being depend on the social health of the
United States, this book provides the information necessary to find
creative solutions for improved performance. For students in a wide
range of courses this book will become required reading.
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