Social Indicators and the Study of Inequality

[...]The New York City Social Indicators Survey (SIS)project represents one effort to track the consequences ofpolicy reform and devolution for inequality and well-beingin the largest and most diverse city in the United States.The project uses a telephone survey to collect data from arepeated cross-sectional sample of the entire city population.The survey will collect detailed information on families’economic resources, assets, external support, and healthand well-being. By analyzing these data by population andover time, we hope to address questions that are at the coreof current debates about inequality in the United States:How great is inequality? Does income inequality exaggerate,or reflect, inequality in material and social living conditions,health, and well-being? Is inequality on these dimensionsgrowing or shrinking? And what effect have devolutionand social policy “reform” had on the magnitude of incomeand other forms of inequality?[...]