Las estadísticas oficiales en Argentina: ¿Herramientas u osbtáculos para las ciencias sociales?

Abstract

El presente artículo propone reflexionar acerca de la relevancia que posee para el desarrollo de las tareas propias de las disciplinas sociales, la existencia y disponibilidad de información económica, social y demográfica que sea confiable, actualizada y comparable históricamente. No constituye, por cierto, un texto propio de la ciencia estadística. Lo que se procura, apenas, es llamar la atención en torno de la pertinencia que tiene la estadística pública, no sólo para los análisis y la investigación académica, sino para el ejercicio de la gestión estatal en sus diversas expresiones y, en un sentido más amplio, para las variadas formas de actividad social.

Every modern country strives to have their own official records at their disposal in order to respond to statistics-related definitions, guidelines and scientific criteria as well as recommendations by internationals organizations of various kinds. Usually, such statistics tend to configure a high density framework because conceptually the more isolated the indicators are, the weaker they become. In other words, almost no indicator makes sense by itself nor can be generated if divorced from or unrelated to the rest. In this context, the following text is set out to ponder over the relevance of the existence and of the availability of economic information, as well as social, demographic, etc., that is reliable, updated and historically comparable. It does not constitute a text that’s exclusive to statistical sciences, however. It is the intention of the present text to simply draw attention around the relevance of public statistics not only for the mentioned academic purposes but for the exercise of government administration in its various expressions and, in a broader sense, for the numerous forms of social activity.