Social Progress Index

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2022 Social Progress Index 2022 Social Progress Index.jpg
2022 Social Progress Index

The Social Progress Index (SPI) measures the extent to which countries provide for the social and environmental needs of their citizens. Fifty-four indicators in the areas of basic human needs, foundations of well-being, and opportunity to progress show the relative performance of nations. The index is published by the nonprofit Social Progress Imperative, and is based on the writings of Amartya Sen, Douglass North, and Joseph Stiglitz. [1] The SPI measures the well-being of a society by observing social and environmental outcomes directly rather than the economic factors. The social and environmental factors include wellness (including health, shelter and sanitation), equality, inclusion, sustainability and personal freedom and safety. [2] [ full citation needed ]

Contents

Introduction and methodology

The index combines three dimensions:

  1. Basic human needs
  2. Foundations of well-being
  3. Opportunity

Each dimension includes four components, which are each composed of between three and five specific outcome indicators. The included indicators are selected because they are measured appropriately, with a consistent methodology, by the same organization across all (or essentially all) of the countries in the sample. Together, this framework aims to capture a broad range of interrelated factors revealed by the scholarly literature and practitioner experience as underpinning social progress.

Two key features of the Social Progress Index are: [3]

  1. the exclusion of economic variables
  2. the use of outcome measures rather than inputs

Social Progress Imperative evaluated hundreds of possible indicators while developing the Social Progress Index, including engaging researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to determine what indicators best differentiated the performance of nations. The index uses outcome measures when there are sufficient data available or the closest possible proxies. [4]

Social Progress Index Rankings

Data are for the year 2022. [5]

Criticism

The index's measure of good governance has been criticized for using data biased against the Global South, and some critics have noted that many of the criteria are based on progressive Western Values. There has also been debate on the relevance or accuracy of many of the measurements for gender equality. [6] A 2016 survey of online users browsing the SPI website indicated that as one of the index's flaws, 34% of respondents found the data incomplete and/or inaccurate, primarily referencing environmental hazards, energy usage, specific health issues, employment availability and quality, income inequality, gender inequality, and corruption as areas not sufficiently taken into account. [7]

From an econometric stand point, the Index appears to be similar to other efforts aimed at overcoming the limitation of traditional economic measures such as the gross domestic product (GDP). A notable criticism is that although the Social Progress Index can be seen as a superset of indicators used by earlier econometric models such as Gross National Well-being Index 2005, Bhutan Gross National Happiness Index of 2012, and World Happiness Report of 2012, unlike them, it ignores measures of subjective life satisfaction and psychological well-being. Other critics point out that "there remain certain dimensions that are currently not included in the SPI. These are the concentration of wealth in the top 1 percent of the population, efficiency of the judicial system, and quality of the transportation infrastructure." [8]

Some critics argue for caution. Though words such as "inclusive capitalism" are now bandied around increasingly to signal a new age, free from ideological battlegrounds between public and private, much of what the organization's founders say about it, in the view of critics, confirms that the index is more about "business inclusivity" than "inclusive capitalism". [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

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Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period by a country or countries. GDP is often used to measure the economic health of a country or region. Definitions of GDP are maintained by several national and international economic organizations, such as the OECD and the International Monetary Fund.

Quality of life (QOL) is defined by the World Health Organization as "an individual's perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genuine progress indicator</span> Enhances Economic / Well-Being indicators

Genuine progress indicator (GPI) is a metric that has been suggested to replace, or supplement, gross domestic product (GDP). The GPI is designed to take fuller account of the well-being of a nation, only a part of which pertains to the size of the nation's economy, by incorporating environmental and social factors which are not measured by GDP. For instance, some models of GPI decrease in value when the poverty rate increases. The GPI separates the concept of societal progress from economic growth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare</span> Economic indicator

The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) is an economic indicator intended to replace the gross domestic product (GDP), which is the main macroeconomic indicator of System of National Accounts (SNA). Rather than simply adding together all expenditures like the GDP, consumer spending is balanced by such factors as income distribution and cost associated with pollution and other unsustainable costs. The calculation excludes defence expenditures and considers a wider range of harmful effects of economic growth. It is similar to the genuine progress indicator (GPI).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gross National Happiness</span> Guiding philosophy of the government of Bhutan

Gross National Happiness, sometimes called Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH), is a philosophy that guides the government of Bhutan. It includes an index which is used to measure the collective happiness and well-being of a population. Gross National Happiness Index is instituted as the goal of the government of Bhutan in the Constitution of Bhutan, enacted on 18 July 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Satisfaction with Life Index</span> Index that attempts to show life satisfaction in different nations

The Satisfaction with Life Index was created in 2007 by Adrian G. White, an analytic social psychologist at the University of Leicester, using data from a metastudy. It is an attempt to show life satisfaction in different nations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Happy Planet Index</span> Index of human well-being and environmental impact

The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is an index of human well-being and environmental impact that was introduced by the New Economics Foundation in 2006. Each country's HPI value is a function of its average subjective life satisfaction, life expectancy at birth, and ecological footprint per capita. The exact function is a little more complex, but conceptually it approximates multiplying life satisfaction and life expectancy and dividing that by the ecological footprint. The index is weighted to give progressively higher scores to nations with lower ecological footprints.

The Gender Development Index (GDI) is an index designed to measure gender equality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Where-to-be-born Index</span> Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit

The where-to-be-born index, formerly known as the quality-of-life index (QLI), was last published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in 2013. Its purpose was to assess which country offered the most favorable conditions for a healthy, secure, and prosperous life in the years following its release.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Legatum Prosperity Index</span> Annual ranking of countries by Legatum

The Legatum Prosperity Index is an annual ranking developed by the Legatum Institute, an independent educational charity founded and part-funded by the private investment firm Legatum. The ranking is based on a variety of factors including wealth, economic growth, education, health, personal well-being, and quality of life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gender Parity Index</span> Socioeconomic index

UNESCO defined the Gender Parity Index (GPI) as a socioeconomic index usually designed to measure the relative access to education of males and females. It is used by international organizations particularly in measuring the progress of developing countries. For example, some UNESCO documents consider gender parity in literacy.

The OECD Better Life Index, created in May 2011 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, is an initiative pioneering the development of economic indicators which better capture multiple dimensions of economic and social progress.

Wikiprogress is a defunct online platform for sharing information on the measurement of social, economic and environmental progress. It is thought to facilitate sharing on ideas, initiatives and knowledge on "measuring the progress of societies". Like Wikipedia, it was open to all members and communities for contribution – anyone interested in "progress" could register.

Although for many decades, it was customary to focus on GDP and other measures of national income, there has been growing interest in developing broad measures of economic well-being. National and international approaches include the Beyond GDP programme developed by the European Union, the Better Lives Compendium of Indicators developed by the OECD, as well as many alternative metrics of wellbeing or happiness. One of the earliest attempts to develop such an index at national level was Bhutan's Gross National Happiness Index and there are a now a number of similar projects ongoing around the world, including a project to develop for the UK an assessment of national well-being, commissioned by the Prime Minister David Cameron and led by the Office for National Statistics.

International comparisons, or national evaluation indicators, focuses on the quantitative, qualitative, and evaluative analysis of one country in relation to others. Often, the objective is to compare one country's performance to others in order to assess what countries have achieved, what needs to change in order for them to perform better, or a country's progress in reaching certain objectives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World Happiness Report</span> Publication ranking national happiness based on respondent ratings of their lives

The World Happiness Report is a publication that contains articles and rankings of national happiness, based on respondent ratings of their own lives, which the report also correlates with various life factors.

Med Jones is an American economist. He is the president of International Institute of Management, a U.S. based research organization. His work at the institute focuses on economic, investment, and business strategies.

Gross National Well-being (GNW), also known as Gross National Wellness, is a socioeconomic development and measurement framework. The GNW Index consists of seven dimensions: economic, environmental, physical, mental, work, social, and political. Most wellness areas include both subjective results and objective data.

The Social Progress Imperative is a US-based nonprofit created in 2012 best known for the Social Progress Index, a multi-indicator index that assesses the social and environmental performance of different countries. The Social Progress Index is an effort to complement the measure of national performance using traditional economic measures such as gross domestic product with data on social and environmental performance.

The European Union Regional Social Progress Index is a tool developed by the European Commission-Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy in cooperation with the Social Progress Imperative and Orkestra Basque Institute of Competitiveness to measure the social progress in the 272 regions of the European Union. The European Union Regional Social Progress Index is based on the framework of the Global Social Progress Index, developed by the Social Progress Imperative (non-profit), but adapts both its methodology and indicators' set to the European Union context.

References

  1. ↑ "Beyond GDP". The Economist . April 18, 2013. Retrieved August 2, 2013.
  2. ↑ "Home". socialprogressimperative.org. Social Progress Imperitive. Retrieved October 30, 2015.
  3. ↑ "Data - Social Progress Index - Methodology". socialprogressimperative.org. Social Progress Imperative. Archived from the original on May 26, 2015. Retrieved May 14, 2015.
  4. ↑ Fehder, Daniel; Stern, Scott (2013). "The Social Progress Index Methodology" (PDF). Social Progress Index 2013. Social Progress Imperative. pp. 39–54. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 23, 2013. Retrieved August 1, 2013.
  5. ↑ "Global Index: Results". Social Progress Imperative. Retrieved April 18, 2023.
  6. ↑ Ruggeri, Amanda (January 12, 2018). "How can you measure what makes a country great?". BBC . Retrieved September 13, 2020.
  7. ↑ Social Progress Imperative User Study (PDF) (Report). Weisblatt & Associés. March 2016. Retrieved September 5, 2021.
  8. ↑ Balangue, David L. (November 29, 2014). "Social Progress Index". Philippine Daily Inquirer . Retrieved September 5, 2021.
  9. ↑ Ensor, Charlie (May 3, 2016). "A new index to measure social progress, but what is it really telling us?". Humanosphere. Retrieved September 5, 2021.
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