Indicators of Social Justice for Status Groups and Their Class Interests

Movements for social justice are sweeping the world. But what do we mean by social justice now that the welfare state has outlived its time? Unlike traditional economic indicators that are presented in a socially undifferentiated form making no distinction between groups of different social status or class, social indicators can be exclusively devoted to the spheres of social distribution. They can be constructed so as to preserve and convey the differentiation in the reality of prevailing social structures. Once we have such knowledge, we can examine degrees of inequity among all significant groups in our society. At American Social Indicators, we have developed a variety of indicators of class-specific structures of social status in family, economic, cultural, and political institutions and of status groups' shared class interests of four types. The indicators show degrees of deviation from status and class consistency as standards of distributive justice and sustainable social development. Solutions are suggested for achieving higher levels of social justice with special attention to active participation in non-profit organizations as a counterbalancing power to big corporations and a constructive direction for protest movements. Presented here are charts, numeric data and operational definitions of these social indicators for American presidential terms between the years of 1981 and 2008 and current trends. The underlying social theory and methodology as well as the interpretation of these indicators can be found in the companion book. Follow the link on the left for more information.