Social Progress Index
The Social Progress Index measures a country’s well-being based on human rights, access to water, food, and education, and other factors that are usually omitted from economic evaluations.
In partnership with the Social Progress Imperative—a global nonprofit supporting cities, regions, and nations to transition to inclusive growth models—San José has developed a tool to help catalyze and facilitate community discussions on how to improve our community. The Social Progress Index asks universally important questions about the success of society that measures of economic progress cannot alone address. The Index helps answer those questions with verifiable, credible, and contextually relevant indicators. We’ve integrated a multitude of local, state, and federal data sources using the Social Progress Index methodology to develop a better understanding of our city.
This tool allows you to dig into that data—down to a specific census tract—and examine issues such as whether people have adequate housing, who is being excluded from opportunity, whether people have access to or are receiving education, and more. We hope this will help communities discuss and isolate their most significant challenges and identify opportunities to address them.
Instructions for using the interactive dashboards:
- To use this tool, click on the image below and start by selecting a census tract or zip code view and then filtering by neighborhood, census track or zip code.
- From there, you can view a scorecard for any individual census tract or zip code to explore how it compares to similar areas.
- To select multiple census tracts or zip codes, hold down the control or command key when making your selections
Download the definitions of indicators.
Download the data sources and raw data.
Download Social Progress scorecards (Census tracts (91MB) or Zipcodes (17MB))
Looking at trends
To see the impact or change of a particular indicator, this tool allows you to select indicators and see how those indicators have changed within a community over time. Instructions for using the interactive dashboards:- To use this tool, click on the image below and start by selecting a census tract, neighborhood or indicator.
- From there, you can view the score or a particular indicator or compare multiple indicators over time.
*Please note that the comparative data is based on percent change.
In developing the Social Progress Index for San Jose, many indicators were considered but were not selected due to issues with data quality and availability at the census tract or zip code level. We see this as a living scorecard and looking to update it regularly. We invite you to email us your suggestions for additional indicators that should be included and ask for your help in identifying data sources that meets the criteria. Our aspiration is to have localized indicators and data sources that reflects San Jose’s character and community.
For more detailed information on the Index’s methodology, data sources, neighborhood definitions, and to download the data, please click here.
Thank you to our partners for their support:
To learn more, volunteer, donate or partner on this initiative, please fill out this form.