The Social Progress Imperative is pioneering the use of social and environmental data to help put equitable and inclusive growth at the core of decisionmaking. Our Mission is to use data to influence policies and investments to better serve all of humanity.
Our flagship tool, the Social Progress Index®, equips decision-makers with timely, relevant, and granular data to provide a holistic picture of the unique context of the communities they serve. It has been implemented in more than 50 countries over the last decade. It measures more than 50 drivers of social progress, prioritizing issues that truly matter most to families and individuals—their health, safety, inclusivity, access to opportunities, and more.By measuring the social and environmental aspects of progress, we gain valuable insights that can help governments at national and local levels set policy and guide investment decisions. Our data enables business leaders and investors to understand the communities where they operate and to make decisions that have a positive impact on society. Nonprofits and media organizations use our framework and data to gain a deeper understanding of what is happening at a community level, to assess needs, or for reporting. By measuring what matters most to people and the planet, the index reveals the needs of the people in a community, it allows government, business and civil society to speak a common language, to align on priorities and agree on benchmarks for success.
The Social Progress Index measures how well a society provides its people with the things they really care about. Are people healthy and safe? Do they have clean water and a roof over their heads? Can they freely access information? Are their rights protected? These are just some of the questions the Social Progress Index framework allows us to ask and answer. The result is a detailed assessment of what life is really like for everyday people that complements traditional measures of progress like GDP. Our index completes the picture that the economic numbers leave unfinished, highlighting the importance of going beyond GDP.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent a bold step towards eliminating poverty and ensuring sustainable, inclusive global development, but they must be measured thoroughly to be implemented effectively. The Social Progress Index captures outcomes related to all 17 SDGs in a simple but rigorous framework designed for aggregation, making it an invaluable proxy measure of SDG performance, particularly for areas where official indicators do not yet exist.
With barely a third of the SDG indicators currently measured in a rigorous manner for a majority of countries, the Social Progress Index addresses a core measurement challenge. The index uses 51 indicators drawn from official UN data but also from globally respected research institutions and polling organizations to provide a comprehensive estimate of SDG performance even where the formal indicators do not exist.
Unlike the SDGs, which provide a siloed view of progress, the Social Progress Index aggregates data across 12 core areas to create a single social progress score, providing a quick but thorough snapshot of overall progress toward the goals. And its focus on measuring outcomes not inputs appropriately prioritizes the progress a community has made towards the goal, rather than effort expended.
To promote the adoption and use of the Social Progress Index tool for SDG monitoring, the Social Progress Imperative created an informal group of UN Member States. This group is comprised of countries that are already using or considering using the Social Progress Index as an SDG monitoring and reporting tool, including Paraguay and Costa Rica.
"We are living in a world that is tantalizingly close to ensuring that no one need die of hunger or malaria or diarrhea," says economist Michael Green, CEO of Social Progress Imperative. To help spur progress, back in 2015 the United Nations drew up a set of 17 goals around important factors like health, education and equality. In this data-packed talk, Green shares his analysis on the steps each country has (or hasn't) made toward these Sustainable Development Goals -- and offers new ideas on what needs to change so we can achieve them.
The Social Progress Imperative®, Social Progress Index® and Social Progress Framework® are registered trademarks with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. We are the sole owners of the indexing methodology and the tool cannot be deployed by any other entity. If you would like to develop an official Social Progress Index® please contact us for training, development and index certification.
David Cruickshank, Board Chair
Social Progress Imperative, Former Global Chair, Deloitte
The Brazil Social Progress Index covers 5,570 municipalities across Brazil's 26 states and the Federal District. It is one of the most ambitious efforts worldwide to measure social progress on a subnational scale.
The Ukraine Refugee Pulse tells the story of Ukrainian refugees living in Poland. We gained insights into their living conditions and shared them to see how the government and other organizations can address their needs.
The People's Report is a global interactive survey of dreams and realities that amplifies unheard voices to advance on the Sustainable Development Goals and social impact.
Measuring social progress for the 32 states in Mexico from 2015 to 2023 with the Social Progress Index.
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