Beyond GDP: The Social Progress Podcast
Insight and inspiration on making the right choices for people and planet. We feature bold conversations with global leaders and innovators from government, businesses, community advocacy, foundations, and more who are charting a path for inclusive growth and sustainability. Hosted by Michael Green, CEO at Social Progress Imperative, we explore how the world must move beyond GDP metrics and economic growth to truly improve the social and environmental wellbeing of communities. ©Beyond GDP: The Social Progress Podcast is an essential listening for decision-makers ready to do things differently.
Beyond GDP: The Social Progress Podcast
The English Speaking Disease?
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For the last 15 years, while much of the world has pushed forward, the US, Canada, and the UK have seen their social progress stall,or worse, go backwards. Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland are also facing some challenges.
We use the 2026 Social Progress Index to diagnose why the English-speaking countries are losing their edge.
Listen now to learn why every English-speaking country ranks lower than 100th in housing affordability, how Canada and Australia are seeing a decline in personal security and see how the UK’s self-inflicted wounds are affecting their quality of life.
These countries must look for inspiration to solve some of their most pressing issues…somewhere else.
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As a member of an English-speaking country, I'm frankly rather embarrassed about how badly most of us have done in advancing social progress over the last 15 years. In that time, the US and Canada have gone backwards on social progress, and the UK, Australia, and New Zealand have effectively stagnated. Only Ireland has achieved any meaningful gains in quality of life over this period, albeit on the back of its weird GDP on steroids, that it's made it one of the richest countries in the world, on paper at least. So what's at the cause and root cause of this English-speaking malaise? Well, some of the causes seem to be local. For a country that seems unwilling or incapable to face up to the challenge it faces in healthcare, education, and so on. The UK, well, our wounds are largely self-inflicted. First with austerity after the global financial crisis that really damaged public services, and then with economically and socially destructive decision to Brexit. Australia and New Zealand they share a common problem, which is around safety, and it's a problem that's not getting any better. New Zealand ranks 91st in the world on safety, and Australia 74th. Domestic violence, theft, and fear of walking alone are problems for both of these countries. New Zealand also has dangerous roads. But what's up with lovable, easygoing Canada? Well it too is weak on safety, 62nd in the world. But it's also lost a bit of ground on things like education, health and rights as well. But the issue that unites them all, including Ireland, is the increasingly unaffordable cost of housing. All the English-speaking countries are worse than a hundredth in the world for unaffordable housing and are all getting worse. Is this an exclusively English-speaking problem? No. The Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and other countries also perform poorly on this metric. But there are plenty of other non-English-speaking countries that seem to have found a solution to the cost of housing. Denmark, Finland, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Austria. These are all wealthy countries where unaffordable housing is not a major problem. So this type of benchmarking shows the problem, like unaffordable housing, is not inevitable, and it also shows where solutions exist if we're ready to look for them. So, you English speaking countries, don't look to each other for a solution to the housing crisis. You're all in the same boat. You need to look more widely to what some other countries that don't speak English have done. Time to brush up on your Danish, Finnish, Japanese, Arabic, and German. Do like and subscribe, and see you again soon.