ABSTRACT
Health and prosperity may be necessary conditions for social well-being but they are not sufficient. One may imagine a healthy prosperous society whose populace feels oppressed, dissatisfied, allenated, or whatever. Such a description has, in fact, been applied by some analysts to the working and middle classes of North America and Western Europe. There is a contemporary research literature dealing with the social construction of various kinds of data: clinic records, suicide, medical statistics, and welfare data. Social indicators do not have an objective existence of their own; they reflect a conception of social reality held by certain interested segments of the society. Wilcox, Mclntosh, and Callaghan built their entire paper around the concerns of feasibility and theory. The matter of usefulness and applicability of indicators is one to which investigatore have been forced to pay considerable attention. Complicating matters is the fact that different segments of any complex society are likely to share different sentiments about the good life.
