About the Project

The American Human Development Project is a nonpartisan, non-profit initiative established to introduce to the United States a well-honed international approach and tool for measuring human well-being: the human development approach and the human development index. The project’s mission is to stimulate fact-based public debate about and political attention to human development issues in the United States and to empower people with an instrument to hold elected officials accountable for progress on issues we all care about: health, education and income.

Co-founders Sarah Burd-Sharps and Kristen Lewis formed the American Human Development Project in 2006 and gained non-profit 501(c)3 status in 2007. The project is funded by Oxfam America, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council with additional funding from the Annenberg Foundation.

On July 16, 2008, the project will launch The Measure of America: American Human Development Report 2008-2009, the first-ever study of human development in the United States or any affluent nation in the world. The Report is published by Columbia University Press and contains forewords by Nobel Laureate and Harvard Professor in Economics Amartya Sen and venture capitalist William H. Draper III. The report introduces for the first time the American Human Development Index, with rankings for U.S. states, congressional districts, and ethnic groups.

Although its work is modeled on the approach pioneered by the United Nations in its annual Human Development Reports, the American Human Development Project has no affiliation with the United Nations.