Spring 2002 volume 98 issue 2 : letters
Re: Social Health of the Nation (Winter 2001)
Sociology professor Marque-Luisa Miringoff criticizes newspapers for devoting entire sections to baseball statistics and stock quotes, while giving short shrift to social data. But her analysis ignores that while we can all mostly agree upon what makes a good baseball player or a financially strong company, reaching consensus on what makes the nation socially healthy is far more difficult.
Miringoff and her colleagues rely on 16 social indicators they deem important, while ignoring different indicators others might view as noteworthy, such as the number of children being raised in single-family homes.
Among the statistics they do choose to include are income inequality and health insurance coverage. What their report ignores, however, is that America has seen millions of immigrants in the past decade, who tend to be poor and lack health insurance. Still, those immigrants contribute much to the nation’s cultural diversity and economic strength — yet, under Miringoff’s calculus, they supposedly make America socially poorer. What’s with that?
And is income equality really a good measure of the nation’s social health? Would America really be any better off if Bill Gates earned the national average, instead of being a billionaire? As the New York Times reported on Dec. 15, 2001, many economists have come to see "inequality as a basic feature of the new high-tech economic scene, the natural consequence of an economy that has begun to reward talent, skills, education, and entrepreneurial risk with increasing efficiency."
Derek Rose '94
New York, New York