About
About the Project
HumanValue Index is an independent research project by a high-school student exploring how we might measure national progress — beyond GDP.
Project Vision
GDP tells us how much an economy produces. It does not tell us whether people are healthy, educated, secure, or free. HumanValue Index is an interactive research platform that reimagines how national progress should be measured — not to replace GDP, but to demonstrate why multiple indicators are necessary for understanding real development.
Research Question
If GDP alone cannot describe whether life is getting better, what set of indicators can? This project asks: what happens to our understanding of “development” when we measure it through human wellbeing instead of economic output?
Objectives
To build an interactive platform that (1) explains the limitations of GDP, (2) presents 12 alternative dimensions of progress, (3) allows visitors to compare countries and customise weights, and (4) cites real public data so claims can be checked.
Design Process
The project began with a literature review of the beyond-GDP movement — from Kuznets to the Stiglitz Commission. I then selected 12 dimensions, gathered data for 40 countries, and organised the information around the question “what does progress mean?”
Methodology
Raw values are collected from public datasets. Each is normalised to 0–100 using min-max scaling across the 40 countries, inverted where lower is better. The default HumanValue score is an unweighted average; “Build Your Own Index” lets users re-weight and see rankings shift.
Learning Outcomes
Through this project I learned how to read economic data critically, how combined scores are created and why their weights matter, and how to explain complex ideas in a clear and engaging way.
Limitations
40 countries cannot represent the world. Scores are sensitive to the chosen normalisation range. Composite indices inevitably lose information that a dashboard of separate indicators would preserve. The HumanValue score is an educational tool, not a policy recommendation.
Future Scope
Adding more countries (especially from the Global South), incorporating time-series data to show change over decades, adding inequality-adjusted variants, and exploring how climate risk could be integrated as a 13th dimension.
Acknowledgements
This project would not exist without the open data published by the World Bank, UNDP, WHO, OECD, Yale EPI, WIPO, and the Our World in Data team. Their commitment to public knowledge makes projects like this possible.