INTRODUCTION

At the beginning of the film Annie Hall, Woody Allen tells a joke: ‘Two elderly women are at a Catskill Mountain resort, and one of them says, “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know, and such small portions.”’ Woody adds: ‘That’s essentially how I feel about life.’ This ambivalence is also reflected in how sociologists feel about official statistics.