The second edition of the Social Progress Index (SPI) assessed all 5,570 Brazilian municipalities using 57 social and environmental indicators. The report shows that, despite gradual progress, the challenges of ensuring quality of life for Brazil’s population remain significant and unevenly distributed across the country.

The SPI also evaluates the average performance of Brazil’s states. São Paulo, Santa Catarina, and Paraná ranked highest, while Pará, Maranhão, and Amapá recorded the lowest scores, highlighting the historical and structural inequalities that persist in the Legal Amazon region.

Overall, Brazil’s state capitals performed relatively better in the SPI, as represented by the blue shades on the map, with the exceptions of Maceió (AL), Porto Velho (RO), and Macapá (AP), which posted lower scores. Among the top-performing capitals were Curitiba, Campo Grande, Brasília, São Paulo, and Belo Horizonte.

The 2025 national SPI score was 61.96 on a scale from 0 to 100. The highest-performing dimension was Basic Human Needs, with an average score of 74.79, followed by Foundations of Wellbeing at 65.02. The Opportunities dimension—which measures social inclusion, access to higher education, and respect for rights—recorded the lowest performance, with a score of 46.07.

Among the index components, Shelter achieved the highest national average (87.74), while Personal Rights (32.41), Access to Advanced Education (47.39), and Social Inclusion (47.21) ranked among the lowest. The weakest indicators are concentrated in Brazil’s North and Northeast regions, with particularly poor performance in Environmental Quality across the Legal Amazon, largely driven by deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. Interestingly, the report also reveals that more economically developed regions, such as the South and Southeast, face challenges in Health and Wellness, including high rates of obesity, suicide, and consumption of ultra-processed foods.

On the SPI Brazil website, users can explore detailed profiles of every municipality, identifying areas of strength and opportunities for improvement. The platform also allows comparisons among municipalities with similar GDP per capita, land area, and population size, providing a powerful tool for public managers, social investors, and citizens to better understand local development dynamics and design more effective actions to promote social and environmental progress.

Visit the SPI Brazil website to explore the profile of every Brazilian municipality: ipsbrasil.org.br

What SPI Brazil 2025 Measures

Social Progress was defined by a group of academic experts and synthesized by the Social Progress Imperative (SPI) as “the capacity of a society to meet the basic human needs of its citizens, establish the building blocks that allow citizens and communities to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives, and create the conditions for all individuals to reach their full potential.”

Based on this concept, SPI Brazil 2025 is built upon 57 indicators organized into three dimensions: Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Wellbeing, and Opportunities.

Developed through a partnership among Imazon, Fundação Avina, the Amazônia 2030 initiative, Anattá, the Amazon Entrepreneurship Center (CEA), and the Social Progress Imperative, SPI Brazil is based exclusively on public data and is updated annually. The tool enables the monitoring of trends and the evaluation of public policy effectiveness in near real time.

The construction of SPI Brazil 2025 follows a rigorous methodology aligned with the international SPI framework. The selection of the 57 indicators is based on criteria such as social or environmental relevance, outcome-oriented measurement, use of reliable public data, regular updates, and availability for at least 95% of Brazilian municipalities. Each indicator undergoes detailed statistical modeling, including normalization, quality control, benchmark definition, and weighting through Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The final result is an index ranging from zero (worst scenario) to 100 (best scenario), reflecting the simple average of performance across the three dimensions of social progress.

Data sources include established databases such as DataSUS, CadÚnico, and Anatel, as well as initiatives such as MapBiomas and the Institute for Health Policy Studies.

Unlike economic indicators such as GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and the HDI (Human Development Index), the SPI directly measures social and environmental outcomes, serving as a compass for policymakers, social investors, and civil society organizations.

“The SPI makes it possible to visualize inequalities that cannot be explained by economic indicators alone. Municipalities with similar GDP levels often show very different performances in the index, reinforcing the importance of integrated public policies focused on social wellbeing. With the SPI, it is possible to identify where public policies are working and where urgent intervention is needed. It transforms complex data into a clear and comparable picture across municipalities and states,” says Melissa Wilm, Coordinator of SPI Brazil.

The 2025 edition includes an important update to its dataset, incorporating new indicators that enrich territorial diagnostics: Consumption of Ultra-Processed Foods, Response to Social Security Benefits, Response to Family Court Cases, Family Vulnerability Index, and Families Experiencing Homelessness.

Key Results

The development of SPI Brazil 2025 received technical and institutional support from a broad network of organizations committed to sustainable development in Brazil. Contributors to this edition include the Amazon Entrepreneurship Center (CEA), the National Council of Justice (CNJ), Eneva, independent experts, Fundação Itaú, Fundação Roberto Marinho, Hydro, the Amazon Institute of People and the Environment (Imazon), Instituto Floresta Viva, Instituto Igarapé, Instituto Itaúsa, the Institute for Climate and Society (iCS), MapBiomas Brasil, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF), Not Another Boring Company, O Mundo que Queremos, Projeto Saúde e Alegria, the Social Progress Imperative, the University of São Paulo (USP), and Vale.