[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 31 (Thursday, March 11, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Page S2709]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      IN MEMORY OF MARC MIRINGOFF

 Mr. EDWARDS. Mr. President, every so often, someone comes 
along and changes the way we look at things. Marc Miringoff was such a 
person. We note his passing last week in New York at the age of 58.
  Marc was a gifted social scientist who had the crucial insight that 
progress ought not be measured in economic terms alone. Gross national 
product, gross domestic product, net foreign investment, balance of 
payments, net savings rates--all of these thrown together, properly 
weighted and critically analyzed could certainly tell us much about the 
state of our economy. But Marc asked whether they would give us the 
true measure of our society. He concluded they did not.
  In the 1980s, Marc sought to change that. He founded the Fordham 
Institute for Innovation in Social Policy in 1985, where he worked to 
develop an index to measure the Nation's social health. The index 
consisted of a number of measures that reflected the worlds of public 
health, education, the justice system, and violence. Marc burrowed 
beneath the numbers to find the underlying, often invisible, structures 
of poverty that undermined economic progress.
  I was privileged to know Marc. I benefited from his counsel and was 
challenged by his insights. I know that Marc was no dry-as-dust 
academic. He relished the political arena as much as he enriched the 
academic forum. He was an evangelist for the concept of social health. 
His eyes sparkled when an elected official got hooked on his ideas. He 
worked hard, bringing others along, encouraging them to look more 
deeply at the fabric of American society and to work harder to make it 
a richer, stronger fabric.
  I will miss Marc. We all will miss him. Right now, the country needs 
more people like him. I offer my condolences to his wife, Marque, and 
to his family.

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