The Public Bubble recently hosted a talk by Michael Green at Westminster City Council (Monday, 26th November 2018). The topic of the talk was ‘Social Progress Index: moving beyond GDP’.
Michael discussed the history of how we measure the success of society and the importance of GDP for this. The Social Progress Index, created in 2014, is a complement to the widely used GDP measure and it measures social progress directly, independent of economic variables. This is different to other measures such as the Human Development Index, which include economic variables as well as social progress measures.
There is a strong relationship between GDP and social progress but it is not the whole story, as Michael explored with a number of examples. The US has the highest GDP globally, but is ranked 25th on the Social Progress index. Interestingly, the index shows poor outcomes for the US health system and the US education system, even though there is significant spend in these areas.
Now that the index is established, the focus is now on how the index can be used in a practical sense. The first country Michael and the team worked with was Paraguay. Paraguay has committed to including a Social Progress measure alongside their GDP target in their National Development Plan. Already this has led to a reduction in child nutrition.
Pye Nyunt, Head of Insight and Innovation and London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, joined Michael at the talk and shared his story of how he uses the Social Progress Index at a more local level to improve outcomes for residents. Pye and Michael have built a Social Progress index in Barking and Dagenham at a ward level (https://www.lbbd.gov.uk/social-progress-index). They are able to capture a number of data sources on this site, from household income to fuel poverty. The index has been built geospatially so you can see the data by ward and in comparison to other London Boroughs. This local version of the Social Progress Index has supported the work of the Council, from helping Local Councilors to engage with residents to providing evidence to supports decisions on the location of services.
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As always, there was a great turn-out with representation from across public sector organisations, including the NGDP, Civil Service Fast Stream, a number of Local Authorities and other Public-Sector groups.
Thanks to Michael Green and Pye Nyunt for their interesting and inspiring talk. For more information, please contact them on their socials:
@shepleygreen @socprogress @nyunt_pye
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