Social Indicators and the Study of Inequality

The authors present first-year findings from New York City Social Indicators Survey (SIS) project. They begin with an overview of the issues that motivated the project and a brief summary of their measures and data-collection methods. The next sections use data collected in 1997 to tell the story of income and outcome inequality in the city - first, in terms of comparisons between the well-being of New Yorkers and the rest of the U.S. population; second, in terms of the well-being of poor and economically secure residents of the city. They conclude by describing future research plans for the Social Indicators project