Some Almost-Forgotten SCF Days, Imputed, Occasionally Multiply

• Activity Number: 162
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 5, 2013 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Daniel Lee*+ and Fritz J. Scheuren
• Companies: NORC, at the University of Chicago and NORC at the University of Chicago

Abstract

The 1960s, with the election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, signaled a new era of social activism in America. Many efforts planned during the Great Depression but put off by WWII were waiting in the wings and some got a new start. Those that emerged in the early 60s were sponsored by the dominant culture, e.g., efforts to address civil rights plus income, wealth and wellness inequalities. The intellectual leaders of these efforts were heroes (to me) like Mollie Orshansky, Joe Pechman, Dorothy Projector, Dorothy Rice, and Joe Steinberg, among many others. The work of some of these people will be my brief today. Incidentally, all were at one time employed by the Social Security Administration. Thus, much of what gets said here does not concern only the Federal Reserve Board but also deals with the larger movement that the SCF was a part of and that involves government agencies as disparate as the Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service plus such nongovernment organizations as the Institute for Survey Research at the University of Michigan and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.