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This article comments on the paper "Toward a Social Report," published by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. This one is labelled Toward to indicate a preliminary step toward the evolution of a regular system of social reporting. It has nine short chapters. Sandwiched between an introduction and an appendix on social reporting are brief substantive chapters on: health and illness; social mobility; physical environment; income and poverty; public order and safety; learning, science, and art; participation and alienation. The distinctive feature and underlying rationale for choice of topics and organization of chapters is a pervasive concern with social indicators. This term, used widely and loosely throughout the literature on social accounting, is here given a particular definition. A social indicator may be defined to be a statistic of direct normative interest which facilitates concise, comprehensive, and balanced judgments about the condition of major aspects of a society. It is in all cases a direct measure of welfare and subject to the interpretation that, if it changes in the right direction, while other things remain equal, things have gotten better. Thus statistics on the number of doctors or policemen could not be social indicators, whereas figures on health or crime rates could be.

While the effects of social origin variables on the status attainment process of individuals are well recognized, the influence of career contingencies--events occurring subsequent to the determination of social origin status--are less well explored. Using the 1/100 Public Use Sample of the 1960 U.S. Census, we examine the effects of one career contingency-military service-with respect to current income for three ethnic groups, Mexican Americans, blacks, and Anglos in five Southwestern stales. Contrary to expectations based on Anglo-dominated statistics in which nonveterans report higher average income than veterans, among both blacks and Mexican Americans, veterans have higher average income than nonveterans. The concept of a "bridging environment" as applied to military service is used to interpret the minority patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistical investigations of the nature or extent of crime are often inconclusive because of the inaccuracy of police, court, and prison records. Besides, the prevalent use of such geographical units as states and nations may obscure significant differences that would appear in an inquiry of greater specificity. This study of homicide in South Carolina, a relatively homogeneous state, attempts to avoid these difficulties, since regional investigations "offer excellent opportunities for such analysis as will distinguish between causal factors and merely component relationships," and since the records of the state and federal bureaus of vital statistics give comparatively reliable data concerning homicide, the killing of one person by another except by accident or legal execution. Approximately 155000 death certificates in the files of the South Carolina Bureau of Vital Statistics were examined, the probable homicide cases secured and investigated further by letters to physicians and county authorities, and the annual rates per 100000 population calculated for each of the counties of the state, this part of the study being limited to the seven year period 1920-1926. In addition, the rates for cities of 10000 or more population were obtained for the years 1920 and 1925 from data supplied by the United States Division of Vital Statistics.