What do the US and the UK have in common with Syria and Venezuela? They are the only four countries to have gone backwards overall in terms of social progress over the past 12 years
For decades, optimistic thinkers have urged governments to embrace an alternative to GDP as a measure of human progress. Now some have. It’s called the Social Progress Index and it’s used by the EU, the Indian government and several UK councils, among others.
So what? It’s gone into reverse. For the first time in the index’s 12-year history it shows a global decline in social progress as measured by dozens of indicators tracking basic needs, “foundations of wellbeing” and access to opportunity. Specifically, it shows that
- four in five people now live in countries where social progress is stagnating or declining;
- Covid knocked back global health, but a long-term decline in respect for rights and freedoms has slowed social progress too; and
- the global reversal follows a decade of improvement in all 170 countries assessed except four – Syria, Venezuela, the US and the UK.
The index ranks countries under 57 headings from basic sanitation and interpersonal violence to academic freedom and perceptions of corruption. Its compilers claim it’s the world’s most widely used alternative to GDP, and their findings this year, released today, support a central contention:
GDP isn’t destiny. The data show that GDP per capita delivers diminishing returns in terms of real lived experience:
- Qatar and the UAE, with per capita GDP of $97,000 and $74,000 respectively, score no better on the Social Progress Index than Jamaica, on $10,000. Barbados outperforms both Gulf states on $15,000.
- Costa Rica, with no standing army but 28 national parks, scores nearly as highly on social progress as the US, with a third of US per capita GDP.
America misfiring. The US economy has grown dramatically since 2011 but its policymakers are “doing a remarkably poor job converting its economic resources into positive social progress outcomes,” the researchers find. Out of the 170 assessed countries, America ranks
- 51st for “rights and voice” (a group of indicators including freedom of assembly and equality before the law), behind South Africa;
- 61st for maternal mortality;
- 70th for personal safety (behind Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia);
- 74th for mortality in the 15-50 age bracket (behind Iran and Bangladesh); and
- 89th in terms of ensuring equal access to quality healthcare, despite the highest spending on health in the OECD.
UK underperforming. For the first time Britain has slipped into the index’s second tier – a group that includes countries with much lower average incomes including Chile, Malaysia and Uruguay. The demotion has been a long time coming: the index shows the UK going backwards overall between 2011 and 2023 on housing, water and sanitation, healthcare and inclusivity (a group of indicators including discrimination and violence towards minorities).
False hopes. Data collected before a wave of coups across the Sahel and the outbreak of war in the Middle East showed bright spots of social progress in both regions, including the West Bank and Gaza. Next year’s findings for these territories will be starkly different.
And yet. Contrary to autocratic propaganda, the bigger picture includes reasons to keep faith with democracy and freedom. “What we definitely don’t see is that autocracies have some sort of miraculous ability to drive social progress in a way that democracies can’t,” says Michael Green, CEO of the non-profit Social Progress Imperative. “China’s return on investment in social progress is not that good [but] Estonia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic have been on an extraordinary journey over the past 30 years. They’ve surpassed the UK and left the US for dust.”
Davos. The World Economic Forum will agonise next week about money, power and “rebuilding trust”. A bit less trust in GDP and a bit more in social progress might be a good place to start.
