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Technical Guidance for Constructing a Human Well-Being Index (HWBI): A Puerto Rico Example
Citation:
Orlando, J., S. Yee, L. Harwell, AND L. Smith. Technical Guidance for Constructing a Human Well-Being Index (HWBI): A Puerto Rico Example. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-16/363, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
A primary purpose of this report is to adapt the US Human Well-Being Index (HWBI) to quantify human well-being for Puerto Rico. Additionally, our adaptation of the HWBI for Puerto Rico provides an example of how the HWBI can be adapted to different communities and technical guidance on processing data and calculating index using R.
Description:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Research and Development’s Sustainable and Healthy Communities Research Program (EPA 2015) developed the Human Well-being Index (HWBI) as an integrative measure of economic, social, and environmental contributions to well-being. The HWBI is composed of indicators and metrics representing eight domains of well-being: connection to nature, cultural fulfillment, education, health, leisure time, living standards, safety and security, and social cohesion. The domains and indicators in the HWBI were selected to provide a well-being framework that is broadly applicable to many different populations and communities, and can be customized using community-specific metrics.