What was going on when I was born?

The American Telephone and Telegraph Company will not earn enough money to cover its first-quarter dividend and might have to reduce its payouts in the future because of insufficient earnings, the chairman and chief executive, Charles L. Brown, said in a statement yesterday. The statement was issued by A.T.& T. as it declared that its dividend for the first quarter, payable to nearly three million shareholders, would be 30 cents a share. That is the same amount predicted by the company last November in advance of the Jan. 1 breakup of the Bell System. Mr. Brown said in his statement that A.T.& T.'s profits for the first quarter will not be enough to cover the dividend, but the company will pay it anyway to keep the promise made in a November prospectus describing the breakup.

It was a rally for John F. Kennedy on the New Haven Green in 1960 that awakened Gary Hart, then a Yale divinity student, to politics, according to his friends. Senator Hart will come back to Connecticut Thursday with his own Presidential campaign and will hold his own rally on the same New Haven Green on Monday evening, the day before this state's Democratic Presidential primary election. Mr. Hart spent nearly seven years here at the Yale Divinity School and the Yale Law School. According to those who knew him then, he came wanting to be a professor and but left with a goal of pursuing politics and public life.

Anthony J. Alvarado annnounced yesterday that he was taking an indefinite leave of absence as the New York City Schools Chancellor until questions about his finances were resolved. The surprise announcement from Mr. Alvarado ended days of speculation that he might resign. But it left unresolved a number of questions about the Chancellor's standing and, for a few hours, about who was in control of the largest school system in the country. Mr. Alvarado made known his decision in a four-minute statement to reporters in an auditorium at Board of Education headquarters in downtown Brooklyn. He then left the room, ignoring questions.

The following article is based on reporting by Jeff Gerth and Leslie Maitland Werner and was written by Mr. Gerth. WASHINGTON, March 21 - Edwin Meese 3d reported more than $10,000 in income on his 1980 and 1981 tax returns that was not reported on his financial disclosure statements for those years, according to public documents and several people familiar with the tax returns. In addition, according to two Reagan Administration officials, Mr. Meese failed to report on his tax returns hundreds of dollars of interest from an account at the White House Federal credit union with a balance that at its maximum was between $15,001 and $50,000. Earlier this week, Mr. Meese amended his disclosure statements for 1981 and 1982 to reflect an account at the credit union. The officials said Mr. Meese might now also have to amend his tax returns.

A unanimous Supreme Court decision today gave the Internal Revenue Service access to what the agency says is a necessary tool for auditing corporate income tax returns. The Court ruled that the I.R.S. is entitled to see the private assessment of a corporation's potential tax liability, prepared by a certified public accountant as a way of judging the adequacy of the company's tax reserves. This assessment, known as a tax pool analysis or tax accrual work papers, identifies questionable aspects of a company's tax return.

A review of the film ''Musical Passage'' yesterday misidentified the theater where it is playing. It is the Festival, 57th Street and Fifth Avenue.

Three years ago, as the highest interest rates of the postwar period brought much of the housing industry to a standstill, the Dallas-based Centex Corporation lured buyers by offering them below- market financing. The strategy cost Centex, the nation's fifth-largest home builder in terms of revenues, $25 million in 1981 to pay the difference between the cost of its funds and the average rate at which they were re-lent. But the company stayed active in one of the worst housing depressions of the century, and the lesson was not lost on management. Now, flush with $300 million from two recent sales of mortgage- backed bonds, Centex is providing the financing on four out of every five homes it sells.

Because of an editing error, an article on the Washington Talk page yesterday misidentified Barry Commoner. He is an environmentalist, author and educator. The head of Common Cause is Fred Wertheimer.

With a court-imposed deadline looming at the end of this month, the House of Representatives passed legislation by voice vote today that would revise the bankruptcy court system and rescue it from the possibility of chaos. Before the final vote, the lawmakers adopted an amendment that would make bankuptcy judges part of existing Federal courts. As originally written, today's bill would have created a new system of bankruptcy courts and judges. The amendment passed by a vote of 250 to 161 even though many lawmakers warned that that it fell short of giving bankruptcy judges parity with other Federal judges, as the Supreme Court has required. Unlike other Federal judges, the bankruptcy judges will not have lifetime tenure. In a statement of policy, the Administration favored the original version on the ground that it provided ''a more certain constitutional course.''

Walter F. Mondale and Senator Gary Hart turned their attention today to contests in New York and Pennsylvania that could establish a clear leader in their race for the Democratic Presidential nomination after the former Vice President's victory Tuesday in Illinois primary, In Illinois, the first of the big industrial states to conduct a primary this year, Mr. Mondale piled up a lead in popular support that promised to lessen doubts about his vote-getting ability. With his success here, Mr. Mondale scored one of the most significant turnarounds in recent Presidential campaign history, as well. In the past, a Democrat favored to win his party's nomination never rebounded to the extent that Mr. Mondale did after losing the New Hampshire primary. Mondale Lead Growing By winning the caucuses on Tuesday night in his home state of Minnesota, Mr. Mondale also built up his lead in delegate strength over Senator Hart and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who placed third in the popular vote in Illinois.

The head of El Salvador's Treasury police has been a paid informant for the Central Intelligence Agency since the late 1970's, according to American officials. The Treasury police have long been considered the least disciplined and most brutal of the Salvadoran security forces and some of the members have been linked by the Reagan Administration to death squad activities. The American officials, who are familiar with C.I.A. activities in El Salvador, said that the Treasury police chief, Col. Nicolas Carranza, had received more than $90,000 a year from the C.I.A. as an informant for the last five or six years. A senior officer of the Treasury police, their head of intelligence, Maj. Jose Ricardo Pozo, was removed from his job late last year after the Reagan Administration pressed the Salvadoran Government to take action against security officers, including Major Pozo, who were linked to the death squads, according to State Department officials. The American officials maintained, however, that there was no credible evidence Colonel Carranza was personally involved with the death squads.

On Tuesday, the Government estimated that the economy is growing at an annual rate of 7.2 percent this quarter, far faster than even the Administration says is healthy or wise. And one day earlier, the banks raised their prime interest rate for the first time since August. With that, a lot of nervous attention - in the marketplace, in the White House, in Congress, in the treasuries of other countries and the counting rooms of industry - turned to the Federal Reserve Board, with fears rising that the central bank is causing or tolerating a new move toward higher borrowing costs. With industrial activity now running at more than 80 percent of capacity and the economic expansion showing surprising vigor, the Fed is worried that new inflationary forces are building and need to be checked by a slower pace of business growth.