Our approach / working paper 0.1 · superseded by research 0.2

Prosperity measurement

We ask how well people live, how broadly opportunity is shared, and what foundations future generations will inherit.

The atlas currently displays 47 published source indicators. The six-dimension index below is a proposed model. This six-dimension proposal has not been calculated or validated. A separate experimental five-domain ranking is available.

Read the stronger framework and exact-bound laboratory →. The original harmonic model below is retained as an early proposal, not the current headline recommendation.

1. Original shared prosperity proposal

P = 100 × (Σ wⱼ / dⱼ)⁻¹

The weighted harmonic mean combines six dimension scores between zero and one: material security, healthy life, knowledge, essentials, protection from lethal crime, and personal freedom. Baseline weights are 1/6 each. Weights sum to one. A zero in any positively weighted dimension gives an overall score of zero.

A weaker dimension pulls the result down strongly. Five scores of 0.9 and one of 0.3 give 67.5/100, compared with an arithmetic average of 80/100. This is a normative aggregation choice, not an empirically discovered law.

2. Material security and distribution

C* = (Σ pᵢ √cᵢ)² ; M = C* / (C* + z)

Here cᵢ is nonnegative household income or consumption per person in a fixed PPP price basis, and pᵢ is its population weight. This equally distributed equivalent uses Atkinson inequality aversion 0.5. The reference z sets the midpoint of material security; it must be calibrated and disclosed. Income and consumption comparisons will be separated.

3. Proposed dimension definitions

Dimension	Candidate specification
Healthy life	min(1, healthy life expectancy / 80)
Knowledge	min(1, learning-adjusted schooling / 14)
Essentials	Geometric mean of basic water, basic sanitation, electricity access, and one minus food insecurity shares
Protection from lethal crime	exp(−intentional homicides per 100,000 / 10)
Personal freedom	V-Dem civil liberties index, 0–1
Material security	Distribution-sensitive purchasing power as above

The constants are provisional. Homicides exclude important forms of insecurity, including war; national service shares do not measure joint household access. Health, food, and material security overlap. These limitations require explicit checks.

4. Assets and durability stay visible

Comprehensive wealth per person combines produced, human, and natural capital with net foreign assets. Annualized real wealth growth is (Wₜ/Wₜ₋ₖ)^(1/k) − 1. We plan to use the World Bank’s published real series rather than add independently chained components.

Renewable natural capital and environmental pressure will appear alongside wealth growth. Increasing total assets cannot certify ecological sustainability.

Before publishing rankings

Audit geographic coverage, licenses, observation years, and income/consumption comparability.
Test weight and threshold sensitivity and overlapping dimensions.
Publish uncertainty, missingness, versioned releases, and reproducible calculations.
Keep user-selected weights separate from the baseline model.

References and candidate data

World Bank PIP · UNDP inequality-adjusted HDI · WHO healthy life expectancy · World Bank learning-adjusted schooling · WHO/UNICEF JMP · V-Dem · Changing Wealth of Nations