Social indicators and social reporting

Abstract

The present integration and future enlargement of the European Union creates a new demand for comparative social statistics, particularly on general living conditions in member countries, as well as their development. The Maastricht Agreement as well as the two white papers on European Social Policy, on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment respectively, address a broad area of policy issues concerning living conditions at a micro-level. Key issues as convergence, cohesion, integration, cooperation and social dialogue are addressed, as well as social exclusion, poverty, equal opportunities, social conflict, racism and segregation. A large set of social concerns is discussed in these documents, such as employment, minimum standards, health, safety at work, housing and social security. These documents also underline the distributional aspects of living conditions, highligtening gender, family, generations, disablility, old age, race, immigrants, the regions, and religion.

These documents distinctly relate to the legitimative fundamentals of European integration: the growth of welfare in all member states, the levelling of disparities of living conditions between member states, and the normative role of European integration for political action at national level.

These articulated user demands, as well as a generally felt need for better international social statistics calls for a strengthening of the statistical infrastructure along the lines of the social indicator tradition, as it already is established on the national level in several European countries. The keyword better statistics stands for an integrated indicator system, improved data quality, comprehensiveness, flexible data collection systems, timeliness, cost-effectivess, and international and regional coverage. There is an urgent need for technical coordination of the national programs before these become too diversified to permit proper comparative social indicator statistics.

In this paper the present status of the social indicator movement is discussed, as well as the routes it offers to enhanced international comparability.