“We need a new way to measure social progress that is independent of economic indicators,”
Many, if not most, aid experts today agree that this didn’t work out too well since it was a gross measure, meaning it didn’t really measure what happened to individual people, and because, well, economics is not all there is to life – or measuring life.
The SPI ranks countries based on three categories – basic human needs; foundations of well-being; opportunity – each of which are broken down further into four categories.