The Human Flourishing Geographic Index: A County-Level Dataset for the United States, 2013--2023

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Human Flourishing Geographic Index (HFGI), a detailed county-level dataset derived from analyzing billions of geolocated tweets using advanced language models to measure various aspects of societal well-being across the U.S. from 2013 to 2023.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, high-resolution dataset of human flourishing indicators based on social media analysis, filling gaps in spatial and temporal measurement of societal well-being.

Findings

Validated the HFGI measures against established indicators.

Revealed spatial and temporal patterns of well-being across U.S. counties.

Enabled new multidisciplinary analyses of social change and inequality.

Abstract

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.