The European Union Regional Social Progress Index is a tool developed by the European Commission-Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy in cooperation with the Social Progress Imperative and Orkestra Basque Institute of Competitiveness to measure the social progress in the 272 regions of the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

. The European Union Regional Social Progress Index is based on the framework of the Global

Social Progress Index The Social Progress Index (SPI) measures the extent to which countries provide for the social and environmental needs of their citizens. Fifty-four indicators in the areas of basic human needs, foundations of well-being, and opportunity to prog ...

, developed by the Social Progress Imperative (non-profit), but adapts both its methodology and indicators' set to the European Union context. The definitive version was released in October 2016. A first draft was released in February 2016. As the main index, computed for more than 130 countries in the world, the EU Regional Social Progress Index (EU-SPI) is a tool to complement existing welfare indices (such as

GDP per capita This is a list of countries by nominal GDP per capita. GDP per capita is the total value of a country's finished goods and services (gross domestic product) divided by its total population (per capita). Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is ...

HDI The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistical composite index of life expectancy, education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system), and per capita income indicators, which ...

), evaluating how effectively the economic success of a country is transformed into social progress. The EU-SPI unit of analysis are the 272

NUTS Nut often refers to: * Nut (fruit), fruit composed of a hard shell and a seed * Nut (food), a dry and edible fruit or seed, including but not limited to true nuts * Nut (hardware), fastener used with a bolt Nut, NUT or Nuts may also refer to: A ...

2 Regions of the European Union. To do so, it uses 50 indicators (the main data sources are

Eurostat Eurostat ("European Statistical Office"; also DG ESTAT) is a department of the European Commission ( Directorate-General), located in the Kirchberg quarter of Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. Eurostat's main responsibilities are to provide statist ...

and the

EU-SILC The European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, (also known as ''European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions'') abbreviated EU-SILC, is a survey department of the EU. In 2004, it replaced the ''European Community Househo ...

). Those 50 indicators are divided in three main dimensions: * Basic Human Needs * Foundations of Wellbeing * Opportunity Each dimension is divided in four components, which at the time contain from three to seven indicators. When the index was released, it showed a great contrast between how regions performed if we use the GDP per capita as a measure of well-being, and how they perform if we use the EU-SPI. Some regions, as the capital region of Belgium (Région de Bruxelles-Capitale), which has a large GDP per capita performed poorly in the EU-SPI (you can find other examples, mainly in capital regions and many regions in Italy and Spain) The publication of the Index had a notable media impact, including articles in the BBC, The ''

Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (''The Huffington Post'' until 2017, itself often abbreviated as ''HPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and covers ...

'' or ''

El País (; ) is a Spanish-language daily newspaper in Spain. is based in the capital city of Madrid and it is owned by the Spanish media conglomerate PRISA. It is the second-most circulated daily newspaper in Spain . is the most read newspaper in ...

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/information/maps/social_progress
European Commission-Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy

Global Social Progress Index

Orkestra Basque Institute of Competitiveness

Social Progress Imperative
Social science indices International quality of life rankings