The Human Flourishing Geographic Index: A County-Level Dataset for the United States, 2013--2023
This provides a high-resolution dataset for researchers and policymakers to analyze well-being, inequality, and social change in the U.S., though it is incremental as it applies existing methods to new data.
The authors tackled the problem of quantifying human flourishing with fine spatial and temporal resolution by introducing the Human Flourishing Geographic Index (HFGI), derived from analyzing approximately 2.6 billion geolocated U.S. tweets from 2013-2023 using fine-tuned large language models, resulting in a validated dataset with monthly and yearly county- and state-level indicators.
Quantifying human flourishing, a multidimensional construct including happiness, health, purpose, virtue, relationships, and financial stability, is critical for understanding societal well-being beyond economic indicators. Existing measures often lack fine spatial and temporal resolution. Here we introduce the Human Flourishing Geographic Index (HFGI), derived from analyzing approximately 2.6 billion geolocated U.S. tweets (2013-2023) using fine-tuned large language models to classify expressions across 48 indicators aligned with Harvard's Global Flourishing Study framework plus attitudes towards migration and perception of corruption. The dataset offers monthly and yearly county- and state-level indicators of flourishing-related discourse, validated to confirm that the measures accurately represent the underlying constructs and show expected correlations with established indicators. This resource enables multidisciplinary analyses of well-being, inequality, and social change at unprecedented resolution, offering insights into the dynamics of human flourishing as reflected in social media discourse across the United States over the past decade.