Moving Beyond GDP: New Regional Social Progress Index
The draft version of the regional Social Progress Index, released today for public comment, aims to measure the social progress for 272 European regions as a complement to traditional measures of economic progress. The index scores absolute performance on a 0-100 scale for each of the 50 indicators included to measure the Index components. It also presents strengths and weaknesses relative to regions of similar economic performance.
This new regional index is intended to:
- Make a contribution to the “beyond GDP” debate, proposing a solid metric to complement GDP rather than to replace it.
- Help regions to identify peers, at any level of economic development, from whom they could learn and, if applicable, prioritise issues they want to address with their Cohesion Policy Programme;
- Serve as a sounding board for the European Commission services to assess whether the 2014-2020 programmes address the right issues in the right places;
[Explore the Index at the EU website]
Reading Development 