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.