What was going on when I was born?

Because of editing errors, an article Jan. 17 on women holding office in the United States incorrectly described findings by the Center for the American Woman and Politics at Rutgers Unversity. The center's recent study deals with women who hold office at the municipal, county and state levels. It said 52,000 elected officials were women, some white and some from minority groups.

The pace of the spring and summer couture shows quickened today as seven designers introduced their collections. The group included one house that has never shown before. The big two are Emanuel Ungaro, who moved to the head of the fashion establishment by developing an individual medley of new and old elements of design, and Karl Lagerfeld, who took over the direction of the Chanel collection a year ago. And it was Jules-Francois Crahay, who helped put the house of Nina Ricci on the high fashion map more than 20 years ago, who scored a striking success with his clothes for Lanvin today. In the past his peasant themes have been too overwhelming, his romanticism uncontrolled.

Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan said today that if President Reagan is re-elected he is likely to propose far-reaching changes in the nation's tax system early next year to try to reduce Federal budget deficits. The changes, the Secretary said, could include a ''simplified'' tax system that would eliminate many of the present income tax deductions and also lower tax rates. In an interview, Mr. Regan also said that a second Reagan Administration would hope to persuade Congress to bring the rate of spending increase well under the rate of the increase of Federal revenues and thus narrow the deficits over a prolonged period. His comments suggested an effort to alter the terms of the taxation and spending debate that has stalemated efforts in Congress and the Administration to deal with Federal budget deficits, which the Administration expects to approach $200 billion for several years.

Funds for school health programs for New York City's 800,000 public school students, sharply cut during the fiscal crisis nearly a decade ago, will be more than doubled over the next three years, city officials said yesterday. Under the new program, schools in poor neighborhoods will receive proportionally more health services than those in wealthier districts. Deputy Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. said that in doing this the city was officially recognizing that students from poverty-stricken families required more preventive medical and dental services than students from middle-class neighborhoods. For many schoolchildren, the health care they get in school is the only health care they get.

Social unrest is increasing in France as workers and farmers continue to protest the Government's new austerity policies. The protests are directed at Government plans to lay off thousands of workers in industries that are suffering losses, like steel and shipbuilding. And the discontent is also focused on programs to reduce inflation and cut the soaring cost of agricultural subsidies by paying farmers less for what they produce. Today, more than 3,000 workers from the Nord-Mediterranee group of shipyards marched through Paris to protest a plan that would eliminate up to 6,000 jobs.

The Philadelphia Electric Company said yesterday that it would suspend work for 18 months on one of the two nuclear reactors in its Limerick nuclear project. This is the latest setback for the nuclear power industry. The utility, which provides electricity for the Philadelphia area, estimated that the delay in completing the Limerick No. 2 reactor, now 30 percent complete, would raise its Limerick costs by $550 million, to $6.45 billion. The project, 30 miles west of Philadelphia, was begun in 1974, with both reactors originally scheduled for completion by 1980 at a projected cost of $1.4 billion.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 1984 The Economy Consumer prices rose 0.3 percent in December, closing out a year of only 3.8 percent inflation, the Labor Department reported. The 1983 inflation rate was lower than that for 1982, when the long recession helped restrain prices. Indeed, it was the lowest since 1972, a year of wage and price controls. Economists warned, however, that for inflation to stay under control, the Government must control its budget deficits as well. (Page A1.) In the New York-northeastern New Jersey area, prices also rose 0.3 percent. (D6.)

Reversing a previous decision, the National Labor Relations Board announced today that companies were permitted to move from a union to a nonunion plant during the term of a collective bargaining contract unless the contract specifically prohibited it. Both industry and union spokesmen said the decision was a landmark ruling that could have a significant effect on collective bargaining and shift the balance between industry and unions in favor of industry. Union officials said it could accelerate the trend of companies' moving to nonunion areas to avoid having to bargain with unions. The decision can be appealed through the courts but the union involved in the case, the United Automobile Workers, made no immediate statement on its intentions.

Governor Cuomo said today that he was drawing up plans to turn the state's system of offtrack betting over to the racing industry or some other private organization. Mr. Cuomo's comments were promptly rejected by Mayor Koch and by the union that represents most employees of New York City's Offtrack Betting Corporation. There is virtually unanimous agreement that the OTB, which takes bets on horse racing, is in financial trouble and is producing less revenue for local governments than hoped for when it was created in 1970. New York City's revenues from offtrack betting have been falling in recent years and dropped to $45 million in the last fiscal year.

The Exxon Corporation, the nation's largest corporation, said yesterday that its fourth-quarter earnings increased 10.1 percent. The company, saying that its business continued to be hurt by conservation in the United States and lower crude oil prices, attributed the gain to increased oil production in the North Sea and internal cost-cutting. The Standard Oil Company of California, the nation's fourth-largest oil company, said fourth-quarter earnings fell 5.2 percent. The Getty Oil Company, which has agreed in principle to a merger with Texaco Inc., said its earnings for the quarter rose 38.3 percent. The Diamond Shamrock Corporation posted a loss because of a writeoff on its dry well in Alaska.

The first light of dawn today revealed scores of white tundra swans from Arctic Canada bunched at one end of one of the icy cranberry bogs of William S. Haines Sr. here in the heart of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Spotting the birds, Mr. Haines drove his truck toward them over one of the narrow dams that separate the bogs, and the graceful visitors honked and took to the air, displaying their six-foot wingspans. In this part of the world, the swans are unwelcome visitors. The birds, which breed in the tundra, have been wintering here by the hundreds in the last few years, ever since they discovered that they can poke their long necks under water to find a weed called the red root that they find particularly tasty.

The cash-laden Royal Dutch/Shell Group, in a surprise move, offered yesterday to pay $55 a share, a total of $5.2 billion in cash, for the 30 percent of the Shell Oil Company that the group does not already own. Wall Street oil analysts said Royal Dutch/Shell, which has some $4 billion in surplus cash, apparently concluded that the United States was the best place to spend it, and that the best investment it could make here was in Shell itself. But they added that many of the private shareholders could tie up Royal Dutch/Shell in lawsuits charging that the price offered is too low. Shares of Shell Oil, one of many undervalued companies to benefit from the re-emergence of oil fever after three years in the doldrums, jumped $9.50 in heavy trading on the New York Stock Exchange, to $53.50.