There’s another new indicator of a country’s “success.” The Social Progress Index has been hatched by the Social Progress Imperative, a US based non profit, led by Michael Porter, Hernando de Soto and others. A nice TED talk by Michael Green, the group’s CEO, explains how it purports to trump the standard measure used for the past 60 years or so – GDP growth. The top performing country by this new index is New Zealand.

The definition of the index is set out below. It has wider scope than the UN’s long standing Human Development Index fathered by Amartya Sen. The HDI ranks countries based on four criteria: Life expectancy at birth, mean years of schooling, expected years of schooling and gross national income per capita.

Meantime The Economist magazine has a new story with health warnings about some indicators - though not the ones mentioned here.