Innovation
Individual Prosperity
Prosperity most commonly is defined as economic well-being. However, prosperity also can be interpreted more broadly to include all aspects of well-being, including social and environmental considerations, or more generally quality of life. Regional prosperity does not necessarily equate to the prosperity of individuals living within the region if, for example, income inequality is high.
Unlike productivity, which can be explicitly measured, prosperity is harder to gauge, for multiple reasons: (1) qualitative aspects of prosperity are difficult to measure, (2) general agreement does not exist as to precisely what level of economic well-being constitutes prosperity, (3) a consensus does not prevail as to the relative importance of the various aspects of prosperity, even when prosperity is defined more narrowly as economic well-being, and (4) regional prosperity measures are different from those of individual prosperity. Regional economic prosperity might be measured by indicators such as gross product per capita and average income. Measures such as the poverty rate, income inequality, and the unemployment rate provide insight into the prosperity of individuals.
An innovative environment should lead to improvements in worker productivity, which in turn should result in increases in prosperity. However, it may take a number of years until improvements in the innovative environment result in gains in productivity and prosperity.
The Individual Prosperity subcategory of the Innovation Indicators dashboard focuses on broad measures of economic well-being that could be affected by innovation. Three measures of income — per capita personal income, median household income, and adjusted gross taxable income per tax return — and the average wage are included.
