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by RT Newsroom
April 23, 2026
from
RT Website
© RT
RT
presents the Social Well-Being Index,
a new way
to measure whether societies
can
sustain themselves, protect life,
and remain
cohesive.
RT newsroom,
a team of
multi-lingual journalists
with over
a decade of experience
in Russian
and international reporting,
delivering
original research and insights
often
missing from
mainstream
coverage...
What makes a prosperous nation?
The West has one answer:
money...
For decades, Western institutions have measured
things like GDP, sustainability and 'human development' to show
which countries are doing well in the world.
But do these things indicate what is truly important for humans as a
species and a society?
Heavily skewed towards individual consumerism,
they downplay tradition and paint the growth of human population as
a problem - to the point where family is seen as an atavism and
'child-free' appears to be the lifestyle of the progressive future.
Such views are very clearly filtered through the prism of the modern
liberal West - so much so that they serve as soft-power tool for
promoting Western 'values'.
If your country scores high on a Western index of
well-being or development, it doesn't really mean it's 'doing well'
by itself - it simply means it is aligned with a certain world-view.
The emerging new
multipolar world order needs new
benchmarks, which is why RT is introducing the Social Well-Being
Index - a new and unique way to measure the status of nations,
which takes into account the most fundamental and objective criteria
of societal health to create a deeper understanding of global
development trends.
Why we need the Social Well-Being
Index
In recent years, the topic of the sustainability of nations has
emerged from the oblivion into which it had sunk decades earlier,
during the era of the confrontation between capitalist and
socialist world systems.
While Marxism-Leninism didn't view nations
as actors in historical processes, the main alternative to the
communist ideology of the USSR and China was Western liberal
universalism that emerged in the latter half of the 20th
century.
Western capitalist elites won the ideological battle by presenting
mass consumption as the solution to social well-being.
Emerging victorious, the West dictated the
terms of globalization.
However, it soon became clear that globalized
capitalism, like the global communist movement before it, did not
ensure national sovereignty or the sustainability of nations, since
this limited the power and profits of the globalist elite.
The influence of this elite is maintained not only through the
dollar and NATO's military strength but also through intellectual
dominance - i.e., the promotion of "correct" concepts when it comes
to the challenges and goals of human development.
This led to the establishment of a binary
development paradigm ("Sustainable Development" + "Human
Development"), which imposed a universal "environmental" and
"humanitarian" agenda on all countries while largely ignoring the
sustainability of nations.
The Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN shortly after
the collapse of the USSR and the Soviet bloc stemmed from
The Limits to Growth
report published by the
Club of Rome.
Along with ecological and social responsibility,
it promoted the need to reduce the human footprint, presenting
population growth in
the Global South as a catastrophic
"demographic explosion" and recommending population control as a
prerequisite for sustainable development.
Simultaneously, "green investing" mechanisms were
employed to restrain developing nations and reinforce the dominance
of the post-industrial West.
In turn, the Oxford concept interpreted human development as
individual well-being and freedom of self-expression.
Grounded in this concept,
the UN's Human
Development Index (HDI) which measures income, life expectancy,
and education levels, highlights the inverse correlation between
these "human development" indicators and birth rates in different
countries.
This reinforced the perception that large
populations are underdeveloped and hinder both the sustainable
progress of humanity and the "human development" of individuals in
each country.
There was only one notable exception, which we
will discuss later.
At first glance, it looks like the HDI evaluates countries, but in
fact it evaluates and compares average individuals rather than
nations, ethnic groups, or communities within which the Homo sapiens
has always existed.
This approach implies that human society is
merely a collection of rational individuals, and that individuals
are primary and society is secondary.
By turning individualism into a methodological
principle, the HDI not only showcases the West's economic leadership
but also emphasizes its "humanitarian" superiority, thus becoming
another tool of global Westernization.
The
Western idea of globalization has gained considerable traction
beyond the "golden billion" partly because it claimed to promote the
spread of Western models of prosperity and individual
self-expression.
The proliferation and maximization of what has
come to be regarded as human well-being and development have led to
the following results.
In the West and among those nations that embraced Western
individualistic values and consumerist ideals, rising living
standards and education levels resulted in a dramatic decline in
birth rates, leading to the shrinking and aging of the population.
These trends have become so pronounced that they
now appear irreversible.
Against the overall demographic decline of the modern world, the
country that particularly stands out is the US. It is now the third
largest world country in terms of population which keeps growing
because of immigration.
Apparently, the US isn't eager to get a taste of
its own medicine and implement population control.
However, America's once-mighty "melting pot" is struggling to cope
with the influx of immigrants, and the mass migration of poor,
diverse peoples poses a major challenge for the country.
In Western Europe, the situation is even more
critical - immigrants from different cultures, who were supposed to
fill gaps in the labor market left by the declining native
population, have only exacerbated the systemic crisis.
This modern "migration period" is intensifying the internal crisis
of the Western civilization, which, without any wars or disasters,
has encountered unprecedented desocialization...
We are witnessing the dismantling of nearly all
established social structures, including the family unit, which has
long served as the foundation of human society.
Meanwhile, the commonly accepted "human development" and "quality of
life" indexes, utilized by international organizations and national
governments, fail to recognize these alarming trends and either
consciously or unconsciously overlook the fundamental paradox of
modern human development:
that the cult of maximizing individual
well-being and self-expression is undermining human society.
The humanitarian paradox seen above appears to be universal,
affecting nearly all countries in today's globalized world, and
particularly the most "advanced" nations, which form the "core" of
the modern world system.
To illustrate this point, let's consider some of
the wealthiest and most developed Western countries, specifically,
-
the United States
-
Germany
-
Switzerland
-
Norway
-
Australia,
...which top the UN Human Development Index.
Now, let's take a closer look at the statistics
on murder rates (number of homicides per 100,000 people) and birth
rates (total fertility rate) in these supposedly prosperous
societies.
The commonly held belief that highly developed Western countries
represent a model of social well-being does not reflect reality.
The "golden billion" is grappling with deep
issues that can no longer be masked by high living standards; in
fact, these problems often emerge as the darker side of consumerism.
This shows the heavy price paid for prioritizing
individual comfort and hedonism as the ultimate goals of human
existence.
Meanwhile, desocialization trends which
are emerging in the West, such as the dissolution of the family and
the shift towards child-free lifestyles, are presented as the
pinnacle of progress.
These ideas are spread through globalization and
can be even more destructive in nations undergoing "modernization"
than in the West.
In this context, countries that strive to build a new world order
urgently need an effective strategic framework to assess the genuine
well-being of nations for the purpose of planning and evaluating
sustainable development.
What the Social Well-Being Index
Measures
The Social Well-Being Index is a tool for measuring and
comparing the well-being of historically established human
communities: localities, peoples, and nations.
In defining human well-being and measuring it, we
imply the following fundamental principles.
The highest good for any person is life
itself.
This fact is universally acknowledged by all
religions, civilizations, and cultures.
Thus, human well-being as such first of all
supposes procreation, or the production of new life.
Consequently, any indicators of human
development that fail to consider this aspect cannot accurately
assess human well-being.
While the production of offspring is an essential
part of human well-being, it is not sufficient in itself.
Human existence from birth until death
inevitably involves suffering.
If life itself is the supreme good, then
other things that ensure well-being are essentially means of
alleviating suffering.
Therefore, human well-being implies not only
producing new life, but also organizing life in such a way as to
help alleviate suffering.
What does this mean?
To reduce human suffering means to minimize
life threatening situations and eliminate extreme forms of human
oppression.
It is important to emphasize that procreation
and the organization of human life are socially conditioned,
which leads us back to Aristotle's classical definition of
humans as social beings.
Consequently, human well-being can only be
understood in social terms.
When the concepts of "social well-being" and
"human well-being" are not used interchangeably, the former serves
as a broader category that characterizes humanity as,
Homo sapiens existing within historically and
geographically defined societies.
The methodology of the Social Well-Being Index
can be summarized in the following key points:
The Production of Offspring
Biologically, viability is a vital condition
for the sustainable development of human communities, and this
is ensured by the reproduction of the population.
The key indicator of this is the Total
Fertility Rate (TFR) - the average number of children born
to a woman throughout her lifetime. This must be at least 2.1 to
avoid depopulation.
For communities that do not face a
danger of overpopulation or a depletion of resources, an optimal
TFR is around 3.0.
This figure indicates balanced population
growth, with the next generation one and a half times larger
than the previous one. A stable economy can support overall
prosperity at such a demographic growth rate.
A TFR above 4.0 is currently typical for the
poorest countries of Africa, where economic growth cannot keep
up with demographic expansion.
For Russia, given its
demographic, geo-economic, and geopolitical realities, a TFR of
3.0 indicates sustainable development, whereas a TFR of 2.1 or
lower poses an existential threat.
A TFR index below 2.1
not only signals a declining population but also shows that the
idea of the family unit - which naturally produces new life and
serves as the fundamental structure of society which teaches the
basics of moral social behavior - is in danger.
Therefore, the preservation of the family is
essential for the reproduction of human society - both in terms
of population and civilization. An important indicator of the
condition of the family structure in society is the ratio of
households comprised of couples with children.
The lack
of relevant statistics in many countries prevents us from using
the 'family' indicator when calculating the global Social
Well-Being Index.
However, given the significance of assessing
the state of the family - especially for nations undergoing a
"second demographic transition" - we will conduct ongoing
monitoring and use this indicator to compare the situation in
different countries and in the regions of Russia where such data
is available.
The Preservation of
Life
In order to minimize threats to human life,
the natural right to life must be ingrained in the public
consciousness, and certain institutional guarantees must ensure
this right.
This includes accessible and effective
healthcare, public safety, and the promotion of a healthy,
social lifestyle.
These conditions create a culture of life
preservation, which can be measured by means of three
indicators:
Infant mortality rates reflect not only the
effectiveness of the healthcare system but also cultural
standards, lifestyle choices, and parental responsibility.
The key statistical measure is the infant
mortality rate (IMR) - the number of deaths of children
under the age of one per 1,000 live births.
A crucial
indicator of a country's well-being is the longevity of its
residents. Life expectancy at birth serves as the primary
measure for comparing countries and calculating the Social
Well-Being Index.
In many highly developed and prosperous
nations, average life expectancy remains stable at 85 years,
which apparently represents the maximum human life expectancy at
this point.
Another crucial indicator of a culture of
life preservation is the mortality rate from external causes
(MEC).
This refers to premature deaths resulting
from socially determined factors such as homicides, suicides,
traffic accidents, poisonings, and various infrastructure and
technical accidents.
These causes, along with the overall rate of
premature mortality, reflect the safety of the social
environment which is determined by the effectiveness of
governmental institutions, social discipline, mutual respect,
and solidarity.
Conversely, the lack of such safety is driven
by social alienation and hostility.
Regrettably, many
countries don't have adequate MEC statistics. Therefore, to
calculate the Social Well-Being Index we focused on the homicide
rate per 100,000 people.
Homicide is one of the most severe crimes,
and the number of premeditated murders is a major indicator of
societal distress.
Minimization of
Social Oppression
Numerous factors contribute to social
oppression, but two stand out in particular:
stagnant poverty and the lack of access
to education.
Stagnant poverty leads to the degradation of
human dignity and social disintegration.
Meanwhile, limited educational opportunities
in childhood exacerbate inequality, entrench social segregation,
and prevent children from getting equal and fair opportunities
in life.
To minimize social oppression, stagnant
poverty must be eliminated and children must have free access to
education.
In our view, addressing poverty to preserve
social unity and health requires not only the eradication of
extreme poverty that leaves individuals on the brink of survival
but even more importantly, the reduction of the widening gap
between the rich and the poor, which serves as a social catalyst
for oppression.
In order to determine and compare income
inequality, which largely determines social unity, we employed
the Decile Dispersion Ratio which presents the ratio of
the average income of the richest 10 percent of the population
by that of the poorest 10 percent.
Children's education
can be assessed through statistics on the enrollment of children
in secondary education institutions, derived from national
censuses and surveys that reflect the percentage of individuals
who have completed secondary education or higher.
While this data is far from perfect, it shows
education levels in different countries and the corresponding
trends.
The Social Well-Being Index has been calculated using the
following methodology.
First, individual indexes for each country were
calculated for each of the following:
Each index was calculated using the formula:
(N-min)/(max-min)*100, where N represents the
indicator's value, max is the upper threshold, and min is the
lower threshold.
The upper threshold indicates the goal that
society should strive for to achieve well-being, while the lower
threshold serves as a point of reference that should be avoided as
social development progresses.
Threshold values are typically determined based on the maximum and
minimum values of each country's or region's respective indicators
in the current era of human development (i.e. since the start of the
21st century).
In cases where negative indicators are extremely
high and difficult to verify (such as homicide rates or the income
ratios between the top and bottom deciles of the population), the
lower threshold is set at double the global average.
Thus, if a country's or region's indicator is close to or equal to
the minimum, its index will approach zero; conversely, if it is near
the maximum, the index will be close to 100.
Similar to the methodology used for calculating
the Human Development Index, if a country or region exceeds the
upper threshold, its social well-being index will still be 100.
Then, the overall Social Well-Being Index (SWB Index)
is calculated as the arithmetic mean of the six individual
indicators:
SWB Index = (BR Index + IMR Index + LE Index
+ HR Index + II Index + CE Index) / 6
The Social Well-Being Index has been
calculated for 146 countries for which relevant statistics are
available.
What the Social Well-Being Index
Shows
At first glance, the ranking of countries based on the Social
Well-Being Index might come as a surprise.
It significantly differs,
-
from GDP per capita rankings,
which reflect the material prosperity of nations
-
from the Human Development Index (HDI)
which considers not only income but also longevity and
education levels...
Interestingly, there is no major distinction
between the GDP per capita rankings and the HDI
rankings.
The most notable difference between GDP and
"human development" occurs only in certain non-Western countries
like Qatar, Kuwait, and Brunei, where wealth is heavily dependent on
hydrocarbon extraction.
This supposedly reinforces the notion that
Western and Westernized nations consistently emerge as global
leaders in development - a point that proponents of the HDI set out
to prove in the first place
The Social Well-Being Index, which takes into account the
production of offspring and ranks nations based on their success in
preserving human life, providing children with a complete secondary
education, and reducing income inequality, paints a very different
picture of the world - one that gives a richer, more nuanced and
dynamic idea of global development.
To take a more detailed look at RT's Social Well-Being Index,
complete with all the statistics, analytical articles, and real-time
monitoring of relevant trends from around the world, check out the
dedicated website, available in English and
in Russian.
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