The census is a social fact, the outcome of a process that involves the interaction of public laws and institutions and citizens' responses to an official inquiry. However, it is not a ‘hard’ fact. Reasons for inevitable defects in the census count are listed in the first section; the second section reports efforts by the US Census Bureau to identify sources of error in census coverage, and make estimates of the size of the errors. The use of census data for policy purposes, such as political representation and allocating funds, makes these defects controversial. Errors may be removed by making adjustments to the initial census count. However, because adjustment reallocates resources between groups, it has become the subject of political conflict. The paper describes the conflict between statistical practices, laws and public policy about census adjustment in the United States, and concludes by considering the extent to which causes in America are likely to be found in other countries.

Are the systems of collective labor relations in member countries of the European Communities converging towards a common European system of industrial relations? In this paper the hypothesis is put forward that the national systems have not been converging in the past and probably will not do so in the immediate future. The analysis is based on changes in procedural rules of collective labor relations and on data on labor unions, strikes, wage structure, and government employment.

This article examines the arguments for and against user fees, privatisation, and decentralisation of health care and family planning delivery systems and compares the effectiveness of fee-for-service delivery by decentralised systems with that of centralised systems with services provided free of charge. Developing countries have achieved remarkable reductions in fertility rates in the past 25 years, but continuing gains depend largely upon increasing the capacity of family planning and health care delivery systems in rural areas. National governments are unlikely to allocate additional funds to improve delivery systems to rural areas because of the greater political influence of urban areas and the declining health-care budgets of the central government. This situation has led many to propose alternative arrangements for health-care delivery in rural areas.