Progress on progress

By K.N.C. and A.C.M.

A deliberately non-economic measure of well-being

THE Skoll World Forum begins today in Oxford, bringing together the most prominent people in the area of social entrepreneurship. When they want to evaluate how well they've performed over the past year, many can turn to a new metric, the Social Progress Index (SPI). Established in “beta” form last year, the latest version tracks 132 countries across 54 indicators. Importantly, the indicators do not look at inputs (like spending on education) but only outputs (like literacy). And they hew to social, health and environmental factors, not economic ones—making it unique compared with other indices measuring well-being from the OECD, UN Development Programme and others.

Yet when the SPI is compared with GDP per person, its usefulness shines. Countries situated above the curve do better in terms of social inclusiveness than their economic strength might dictate, while countries below the curve perform worse. "There is a view that economic development and social progress go hand in hand. That's true on average, but not in particular," says Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School who worked on the study. (Matthew Bishop, The Economist's US Business Editor, also served on the advisory board.) Hence, Costa Rica and Iran have similar GDP per person, but exhibit massive social differences. Likewise, Brazil and Kuwait rank about the same in terms of social progress, even though the Gulf country has four times the GDP per person. Mr Porter hopes that countries will use the ranking to identify areas to improve. Skoll forum attendees might learn where to put their effort as well.