Benchmarking expectations and quality of metrics of societal progress

Policymakers and the public increasingly rely on benchmarks to track progress and guide interventions on critical challenges from climate change to economic inequality. Yet the validity and reliability of these widely-used indicators of societal progress remain largely unexamined. We conducted a systematic audit of 99 popular benchmarks across eight domains critical to human flourishing, as identified by 24 world-leading experts from diverse disciplines. Using six criteria derived from measurement best practices—definability, quantifiability, data availability, global representativeness, transparency, and temporal resolution—only 31% of expert-endorsed indicators met the standards necessary for valid inference. Strikingly, experts’ rankings of domain importance were inversely related to the quality of available indicators, with even the highest-priority domain (climate) having substantial measurement gaps, suggesting negligence in prioritizing the development of reliable metrics in critical domains. These findings reveal a fundamental disconnect between what we need to measure and what we can reliably measure, raising serious questions about the empirical foundation of global policy initiatives. Our results underscore the urgent need for investment in robust, transparent, and globally representative measurement systems, particularly as political pressures increasingly threaten data integrity and availability.