downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 430843.27articles per million people
- Year
- 2023. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.JRN.ARTC.SC)
- History
United States
Strongest usable evidence: Adaptability, at 72.8. Coordination needs more evidence: confidence is 0.23.
Raise, lowest first
No low-scoring dimension has usable evidence.
Measure before managing
| Dimension | Confidence | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Coordination | 0.23 | 98.8 |
| Agency | 0.37 | 82.1 |
| Shared Purpose | 0.43 | 54.3 |
These lists are the country's capability agenda, computed from the scores. Read the full agenda. It names comparable evidence from other countries and the 18 gaps in the registry.
Why this country is included: High innovation and agency; large-scale institutional complexity.
Anticipation70.6Confidence0.46usableHow capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change?
United States
Read United States beside up to three other countries, down to the indicator behind every row.
- Usable or good evidence
- Thin evidence, hollow point. The dashes open further as confidence falls.
- The point still sits at the score, because confidence never moves it.
- Click any axis to see every country on that dimension.
A score from 0 to 100 is a position inside the frame that all the benchmark countries set: zero is the weakest on a dimension and 100 is the strongest. A score of 10 puts a country near the floor of that frame and does not mean 10 percent of a capability.
| Coordination | 0.23 | 2 of 5 | 0.79 | no trend | 75.0 | -23.8 | |
| Agency | 0.37 | 3 of 5 | 0.67 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Adaptability | 0.62 | 4 of 6 | 1.00 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Anticipation | 0.46 | 2 of 4 | 0.96 | +0.5(2) | 69.0 | -1.6 | |
| Trust | 0.50 | 5 of 7 | 0.85 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Learning | 0.55 | 3 of 4 | 0.81 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Building | 0.53 | 4 of 6 | 0.83 | +0.4(3) | no data | no estimate | |
| Shared Purpose | 0.43 | 3 of 6 | 0.94 | -0.8(2) | 47.0 | -7.3 | |
| Experimentation | 0.53 | 6 of 9 | 0.88 | +0.7(3) | no data | no estimate |
How to read this page
Each dimension has a score from 0 to 100. It shows where this country sits among all 125 countries in the comparison frame, not a percentage. Confidence sits beside the score. A dashed radar edge and hollow point mean the evidence is thin. The records below show each indicator, its raw value, year and source.
A panel estimate, when present, is a separate judgment about what the indicators miss. It does not change the score or confidence. The panel's provenance is shown beside the estimate.
- direct capability measuredirect capability measure Measures the thing itself.
- capability inputcapability input Measures something that supports the capability.
- downstream outcomedownstream outcome Measures a result that usually follows from the capability.
- perception proxyperception proxy Records what people or experts say, not what they did.
Confidence
- very thin0.00 to 0.25
The score rests on one or two indicators. Do not quote it on its own.
- thin0.25 to 0.45
A minority of indicators, or evidence old enough to have moved. Read with care.
- usable0.45 to 0.65
Enough evidence to compare countries, with known holes.
- good0.65 and above
Most indicators observed, recent, from official or intergovernmental sources.
A row marked no dataset exists is a gap: the benchmark wants data that nobody publishes. A retired row has a source this project chose not to use. Both reduce confidence. The glossary defines each term, and the limits page lists where these numbers are known to be wrong about the world.
Anticipation
How capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change?
+0.5 over 10 years, from 70.1 in 2016 to 70.6 on 2 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 90.059index 0-100
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IQ.SPI.OVRL)
- History
Government foresight capacity
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No comparable international dataset. OECD and UN work is descriptive, not scored. Envisioning would have to build this.
Long-horizon research commitments
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of new grants
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the share of R&D spending classed as basic research, which is the make-up of a spending stock, the construct D142 retired business R&D share for. OECD MSTI publishes that share for its members only, and UNESCO UIS no longer serves R&D by type of research (construct audit, 2026-10-02). The behaviour behind it is a funder committing to a horizon: a grant awarded for five years or more is a decision to wait for a result. Untried: no memo has triaged a grant register. National funders publish award lists one by one with their own durations, and commercial grant aggregators fail the inspectability rule. Wireable on a grant-level register with award and end dates, on one definition of a competitive public grant, for half the frame or more.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
R&D expenditureWorld Bank (GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS), 2023
3.4 % of GDP, rank 4 of 118. Gross domestic expenditure on research and development as a share of GDP.
A condition, not scored: money committed to research is what a country spends, and spending it does not show the country reads the future well (D122).
Researchers in R&DWorld Bank (SP.POP.SCIE.RD.P6), 2022
4,937 per million people, rank 20 of 114. Full-time-equivalent researchers per million people.
A condition, not scored: a standing stock of people who could investigate is what a country has, not a record of what they found (D122). Correlates with income but survives size normalization.
Secure internet serversWorld Bank (IT.NET.SECR.P6), 2024
196,616 per million people, rank 5 of 125. Servers using encryption in internet transactions, per million people.
A condition, not scored: a diffusion stock of digital adoption that money buys, not an act of anticipation (D122). Spans four orders of magnitude, so its rank is read on the published value and its correlations on the logged one.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Office of Technology Assessment, defunded and closed in 1995
Congress gave the Office of Technology Assessment, created under the Technology Assessment Act of 1972, the statutory function to provide early indications of the probable impacts of technology; it appropriated $21,970,000 for the office with a cap of 143 staff for fiscal year 1995, then appropriated $3,615,000 for fiscal year 1996 to carry out its orderly closure, with no more than 17 employees paid except for severance.
3,615,000 US dollars, appropriation for the orderly closure of the office of technology assessment, FY1996. 21,970,000 US dollars, appropriation for office of technology assessment salaries and expenses, the last operating year, FY1995. US Government Publishing Office, Public Law 104-53, Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 1996 (109 Stat. 514), retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: Congress built its own analytic office, governed by a bipartisan board of members, to give legislators early warning on technology choices, and later closed it through the appropriations bill rather than by repeal, cutting its funding by roughly five sixths in one year and capping staff for the wind-down.
Limits: Technology assessment is adjacent to strategic foresight, not the same thing: the office studied technologies on request from congressional committees rather than running whole-of-government scenarios. It is filed here because its statute, 2 U.S.C. 472(c), states an anticipatory function, to provide early indications of the probable beneficial and adverse impacts of the applications of technology (govinfo, US Code 2023 edition, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2023-title2/html/USCODE-2023-title2-chap15-sec472.htm). Both figures are appropriations, not spending or output: they show the money Congress gave, not what the office produced, and the 143 and 17 figures are statutory staff caps, not headcounts. The FY1995 figure comes from a different source, Public Law 103-283 in the Statutes at Large (108 Stat. 1423), inside a PDF on page 11 of the file (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-108/pdf/STATUTE-108-Pg1423.pdf). The authorising statute was not repealed and still appears in the US Code, so the office was ended by withdrawing funds rather than by abolishing its legal basis; it could be refunded without new legislation. The 1996 act also carried $2,500,000 of FY1995 funds forward to September 1996, so the FY1996 closure figure is not the whole of the wind-down money. Started is the year of the authorising Act, not the year the office first reported.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 69.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
The research, intelligence and statistical base is the deepest in the frame, and panelist B is right that foresight is distributed across universities, states and firms, which lifts me one point. Since 2025, sharp cuts to federal science funding, disruption to statistical agency leadership and the dismantling of pandemic preparedness offices put the durability of the public institutions in question, so I stay below the indicator.
- 71.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Slight revision down: panelist A is right that dismantled pandemic preparedness offices and disrupted statistical leadership put the durability of federal foresight in question. Distributed foresight in universities, firms, states and think tanks remains deep, so I stay above A and C.
- 68.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Statistical capacity and research volume are very large but much is bought by scale of spending. Federal cuts and uneven preparedness (pandemic, grid) argue against going higher, so I hold at 68.
Agency
How able are individuals and organizations to turn an intention into action?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
New business density
direct capability measuremissing- Raw value
- no dataper 1,000 aged 15-64
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (IC.BUS.NDNS.ZS)
- History
- no data
Note: Directly observes intention turning into a registered entity. Undercounts informal activity, which matters for India and Brazil.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 4.2days
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.REG.DURS.MA.DY)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 6count
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.REG.PROC.MA.NO)
- History
Adults doing digital tasks
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of adults
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- ITU / UNESCO UIS (SDG 4.4.1, ICT skills by type)
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked whether adults can perform standard digital tasks, which reads a skill level, the kind of stock D122 moved out of the scores with internet users. It now counts the act: a person who did the task. It is not the internet users condition beside it, which counts access. Candidate: ITU ICT skills by type (SDG 4.4.1) through the UNESCO UIS API, probed 2026-10-02. Sent a message with an attached file reaches 33 of the 53 countries then in the frame, 25 at 2018 or later, with no United States, India or China and most of Africa and Central America missing; two other task items reach 31 and 16. The items are self-reported and the task list has changed between rounds. Wireable on one task observed for half the frame or more at 2018 or later.
perception proxyobserved
- Raw value
- 7.7mean 1-10
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (A173)
- History
- one year
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Individuals using the internetWorld Bank (IT.NET.USER.ZS), 2024
94.7 % of population, rank 16 of 125. Share of the population that used the internet in the last three months.
A condition, not scored: access to the basic tool of modern agency is what people have to act with, not a record of them acting (D122). Saturates near 95%, which compresses the top of the range.
Financial account ownershipWorld Bank (FX.OWN.TOTL.ZS), 2024
97 % aged 15+, rank 23 of 122. Adults with an account at a bank or mobile money provider.
A condition, not scored: holding an account is the precondition for almost any economic action, not the action (D122). Global Findex, published every three years.
Credit to the private sectorWorld Bank (FS.AST.PRVT.GD.ZS), 2025
201 % of GDP, rank 1 of 124. Domestic credit provided to the private sector by financial corporations.
A condition, not scored: financial depth is a stock of money available to actors, not what they do with it (D122). High values can also signal a credit bubble, so more is not always better.
Coordination
How effectively can independent actors organize around shared objectives?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
Government effectiveness
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_GE.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The WGI aggregate the opinions of experts and firms, and in this set the four WGI series correlate with each other between 0.93 and 0.98 while correlating with log GDP per capita at 0.91. That is one perception of national wealth counted in three dimensions. Cross-agency delivery records are the replacement and they are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
Regulatory quality
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_RQ.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. Same measurement as government effectiveness, filed under a different name, correlating with it above 0.93. See D23 and A4.
Logistics performance
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataindex 1-5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (LP.LPI.OVRL.XQ)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The LPI is a survey of international freight forwarders, so it records how a country looks to global logistics firms. A small country with a small port scores low whatever its state can organise, which is artefact A9. Container throughput and border time are observable and stay. See D23.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 1.5hours
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (TRD.ACRS.BRDR.EXPT.BRDR.COMP.HR.DB1619)
- History
Budget execution fidelity
direct capability measuremissing- Raw value
- no datapercentage points from approved budget
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GF.XPD.BUDG.ZS)
- History
- no data
Note: Observable alignment between an approved public plan and what government spent. The API covers 113 of 125 countries, with a latest year between 2016 and 2024. Values above and below 100 both indicate deviation, so the transform measures absolute distance from the approved budget rather than rewarding overspending. See D55.
University-industry collaboration
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Global Innovation Index
- History
- no data
Note: GII carries it, but the underlying item is a WEF executive opinion survey whose microdata is not inspectable. Excluded on principle 4.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.963index 0-1
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- V-Dem (v2x_cspart)
- History
- one year
Public-private collaboration
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 2 records- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No comparable dataset. PPP investment databases measure infrastructure finance, not collaboration capacity.
Behavioral check, not scored
Each number below is published beside the score and stays out of it. It is not in the frame, the average, the indicator count or the confidence.
Customs clearance time for exportsWorld Bank (IC.CUS.DURS.EX), 2024
8.225 days, lower is better. Average number of days to clear direct exports through customs, as reported by manufacturing firms that export directly, in the World Bank Enterprise Surveys.
Days a manufacturer that exports directly says its goods took to clear customs, from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. It is the time the border took on firms' own shipments, current where the Doing Business border time this capability scores is frozen at 2019. It is not scored for two reasons. The number of firms behind each country's figure is published only in the survey microdata, and on a proxy from the published tables 37 of the 53 countries in the frame when it was checked clear 30 exporting firms; Mexico, the Philippines, Israel and nine others may not. And the question changed: surveys fielded from 2024 also ask how long release took across all border agencies, and drop an answer where customs alone took longer, so a country surveyed on both sides of the change can move severalfold with nothing at its border changing. India reads 17.3 days in 2022 and 2.5 in 2025, on more than 9,000 firms each time. No country in the frame has two surveys on the new questionnaire yet. Income is not why it is left out: it barely tracks log GDP per capita.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Affordable Connectivity Program, and its lapse
The Federal Communications Commission ran the Affordable Connectivity Program from 31 December 2021, paying monthly broadband discounts through voluntarily participating internet providers to more than 23 million enrolled households, and ended it on 1 June 2024 when the funding Congress had provided ran out.
23 million households, households enrolled in the acp when new enrolments stopped, 2024-02. Federal Communications Commission, press release 'FCC brings Affordable Connectivity Program to a close' (DOC-402930A1), retrieved 2026-10-01.
How it worked: Congress funded a fixed pot, the FCC turned it into a monthly discount that private internet providers applied on their own bills, and enrolment climbed until the pot was exhausted; when Congress did not refill it, the FCC froze enrolment, cut the benefit to a partial discount and closed the program.
Limits: The 23 million figure is the regulator's own enrolment count, taken at the February 2024 freeze, and it reports sign-ups, not households that would otherwise have gone without broadband: the FCC's claim that 68 percent of ACP households had inconsistent or no connectivity before rests on a self-reported agency survey. The program was a voucher paid through private providers whose participation was voluntary, so a hostile reviewer would call it a subsidy channel rather than joint delivery; the public-private element is that providers carried enrolment, billing and the discount. It grew out of the pandemic-era Emergency Broadband Benefit, so the 2021 start understates how long the capability was built. It ended through a funding lapse rather than a repeal, and the FCC said it could resume if Congress appropriated money, so 'dismantled' records the end of delivery, not the destruction of the administrative machinery. The release is an agency press statement, not an audited statistical series, and the PDF is the script-readable copy; the fcc.gov program pages block automated requests.
Operation Warp Speed, an HHS and DOD partnership, financed private vaccine makers' development, at-risk manufacturing and advance purchases, including a $5.97 billion contract for 300 million Pfizer/BioNTech doses. Three of the vaccines it bought held FDA emergency use authorization by 1 March 2021, the first from 11 December 2020.
3 vaccines, ows-purchased covid-19 vaccines holding fda emergency use authorization, 2021-03-01. 5.97 USD billion, ows contract value for 300 million pfizer/biontech doses, 2021-03-01. Congressional Research Service, Insight IN11560 'Operation Warp Speed Contracts for COVID-19 Vaccines and Ancillary Vaccination Materials', version 7, retrieved 2026-10-01.
How it worked: HHS and DOD pooled BARDA's countermeasure contracting with defense logistics and paid private manufacturers to build production capacity while trials were still running, carrying the financial risk of failure so that doses existed the day authorization came.
Limits: The metric counts authorized products, not doses delivered or people vaccinated. It does not show what share of the speed came from federal money rather than private R&D already under way: Pfizer/BioNTech took no federal development funding and joined only through a purchase contract, as the CRS notes. The contract values are awards, not outlays, and CRS cites BARDA and DOD pages without auditing them; the GAO's audit of OWS sits on gao.gov, which blocks automated requests, so it is not the source here. The CRS Insight is a congressional research summary rather than a statistical series, and it does not state the May 2020 launch date, so 'started' is the year vaccine delivery began. Ancillary-supply shortages and distribution problems are flagged in the same document. The Biden administration said it planned to restructure and rename OWS, so 'concluded' marks the end of the vehicle, not of federal vaccine purchasing.
Manufacturing USA innovation institutes
In fiscal 2023 the 16 reporting Manufacturing USA institutes, public-private consortia sponsored by the Departments of Commerce, Defense and Energy, managed 929 applied research and development projects and held 2,921 memberships, 655 of them universities, community colleges and other academic members alongside 1,315 small and 493 large manufacturers.
929 projects, ongoing applied research and development projects across the institutes, FY 2023. 655 memberships, academic members (universities, community colleges, etc.) of the institutes, FY 2023. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office, Manufacturing USA Report to Congress 2025 (covering FY 2023), retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: Federal agencies fund a standing consortium per manufacturing technology for a fixed term; firms, universities and colleges pay membership and cost share to sit on a shared applied research and workforce agenda that no single member would fund alone.
Limits: The figures are the institutes' own reports aggregated by the program office, in Table 2 on PDF page 13 (printed page 11) of the report, and they cover fiscal 2023 although the report was posted in March 2026, so they are about three years old. Sixteen of the 17 institutes report; EPIXC joined mid-year and is excluded. The counts are memberships, not distinct organisations: a university that belongs to three institutes counts three times. The academic count mixes research universities with community colleges, which join mainly for workforce training, and the report does not say how many of the 929 projects actually pair a university with a firm; some are workforce or firm-only projects. Federal base funding was 160.4 million dollars in the year against 379.5 million of cost share and other funding, all as reported by the institutes, with no counterfactual for what members would have done anyway. The start year is the first institute, America Makes, established August 2012 per the report's Appendix B; the program's statute is the Revitalize American Manufacturing and Innovation Act of 2014.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 75.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Civil society and border processes are at the top of the frame and non-state actors coordinate at scale. Federal budgeting by continuing resolution and shutdown, federal-state fragmentation and slow, costly infrastructure delivery show weak public coordination, and the panel agrees on the size of the discount, so I hold.
- 76.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Slight revision down toward the panel: shutdowns, continuing resolutions and slow infrastructure delivery show weak public coordination. Non-state coordination through associations, firms and philanthropy is very strong, which keeps me at the upper end.
- 73.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Border time and civil society are at the top of the frame, but the country does not reliably convert them into coordinated delivery across federal, state and private actors. Budget brinkmanship and slow infrastructure keep it well below the indicator score.
Trust
How much cooperation is possible beyond immediate personal networks?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
Rule of law
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_RL.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite correlating with control of corruption above 0.95 and with log GDP per capita at 0.83. Court throughput and case clearance rates are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
Control of corruption
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_CC.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite. It measures reputation for corruption, which is not the same thing as corruption, and it tracks income closely. Prosecution and audit records are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 444days
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (ENF.CONT.DURS.DY)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 2.793% of firms
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.FRM.BRIB.ZS)
- History
- one year
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 2.966scale 0-4 (never to always)
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- V-Dem (v2jucomp_osp)
- History
- one year
Intentional homicide rate
downstream outcomeretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataper 100,000 people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (VC.IHR.PSRC.P5)
- History
- no data
Note: Added 2026-08-26 by D23 as the observable replacement for two retired WGI perception composites, and retired 2026-08-27 by D44 when the diagnostic built in D42 measured what it was doing. It raised this dimension's correlation with log GDP per capita by 0.288, from 0.096 to 0.385, the largest single wealth contribution anywhere in the model. It was added to fix wealth contamination and it was the wealth contamination. The dataset is sound and the objection is to what it measures here: homicide is driven heavily by organised crime, a society can be physically safe while trusting very little, and across this country set the variation it carries is mostly income. Behavioural trust measures remain a gap.
perception proxyobserved
- Raw value
- 37% agreeing
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (A165)
- History
- one year
Trust in public institutions
perception proxyno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% expressing confidence
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD Trust Survey / WVS
- History
- no data
Note: The OECD survey covers members only. Mixing it with WVS items for India and South Africa would break comparability. The Joint EVS/WVS confidence battery (E069) reaches 37 countries from one release, and confidence in the courts (E069_17) is published beside Trust as a check under this id rather than scored: every item of the battery tested (courts, civil service, police, parliament and government) reads higher in the closed and electoral autocracies of the frame than in its democracies, which is deference as much as confidence (A13). The gap stays open for a measure that does not reward a court that cannot rule against the state. See D132.
perception proxyobserved
- Raw value
- 39.4% expressing trust
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (G007_34_B)
- History
- one year
Court case clearance rate
downstream outcomeno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of incoming cases
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- CEPEJ / OECD / national court statistics
- History
- no data
Note: Whether a court finishes what it starts, counted from case records rather than asked in a survey. D23 named it as the observable replacement for the two retired WGI composites and it has stayed unfilled since. CEPEJ publishes it for Council of Europe members and OECD for its own members, so no single publisher reaches this country set, and a harmonised series needs the project second source adapter. See D57.
Behavioral check, not scored
Each number below is published beside the score and stays out of it. It is not in the frame, the average, the indicator count or the confidence.
Confidence in the courtsJoint EVS/WVS (E069_17), 2022
11.1 % a great deal, higher is better. Share of survey respondents saying they have a great deal of confidence in the justice system and courts, of the four answers a great deal, quite a lot, not very much and none at all, in the Joint EVS/WVS 2017 to 2022 survey round.
Confidence in the courts is the public half of what this capability asks: whether people expect the rules to be enforced when a stranger breaks them. It is not scored because the survey answer reads two things the number cannot tell apart. Where courts are independent, confidence is a judgment of how they perform. Where they answer to the state, it is also deference, and saying otherwise to an interviewer has a cost. In this frame the pattern runs the wrong way. India, the Philippines and Indonesia, all electoral autocracies in the V-Dem 2025 classification, lead on the share saying a great deal, and Vietnam and China, the two closed autocracies surveyed, lead once quite a lot is counted too. The ten electoral autocracies average 21.8 percent saying a great deal and the two closed autocracies 28.1, against 13.6 for liberal and 8.4 for electoral democracies. Scored, it would rank highest the states whose courts are least able to rule against them. Income is not why it is left out: the share correlates about -0.18 with log GDP per capita. The value is the share saying a great deal; the share saying quite a lot is in the source note.
Learning
How effectively does the country acquire, distribute, and update knowledge?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.702index 0-1
- Year
- 2020. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (HD.HCI.OVRL)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 40.76% of firms
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.FRM.TRNG.ZS)
- History
- one year
Adult learning participation
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no data% of adults
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Eurostat / OECD PIAAC
- History
- no data
Note: The best available measure of continuous learning capacity, and it exists only for European and OECD members.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 1.424ratio to world average
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- OpenAlex (citation_normalized_percentile.is_in_top_10_percent)
- History
- one year
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Tertiary enrolmentWorld Bank (SE.TER.ENRR), 2022
79.4 % gross, rank 25 of 124. Gross enrolment ratio in tertiary education.
A condition, not scored: enrolment counts people in formal education and records nothing learned (D122).
Public education expenditureWorld Bank (SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS), 2021
5.4 % of GDP, rank 24 of 125. Government expenditure on education as a share of GDP.
A condition, not scored: public spending on education is a pure input, and learning is what the dimension asks about (D122).
Vocational share of secondaryWorld Bank (SE.SEC.ENRL.VO.ZS), 1996
0 % of secondary, rank 123 of 125. Vocational pupils as a share of total secondary enrolment.
The value is from 1996, more than 15 years old.
A condition, not scored: the share of secondary pupils on a vocational track describes how a school system is built, not what anyone learns in it, and higher is not unambiguously better (D141). It marks a route into skilled work that does not run through university. Learning reads research citation impact, firm training and the human capital index instead.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Federally funded, state-administered adult basic, adult secondary and English language programmes served 2,629,643 participants in fiscal year 2000, and by fiscal year 2021 served 770,179, after a fall through every year the table shows up to fiscal year 2020 (627,728) and a partial rebound in 2021.
770,179 participants, participants in state-administered adult basic, adult secondary and english language acquisition programmes, FY2021. 2,629,643 participants, participants in the same programmes in fiscal year 2000, the highest year the table shows, FY2000. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2022, table 507.20 (from the OCTAE National Reporting System), retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The federal government funds states by formula to run adult basic education, high school equivalency preparation and English classes through local providers, and requires every state to report participants and outcomes into one national reporting system.
Limits: The table starts in fiscal year 2000, so the second metric is the highest year it shows, not a proven all-time peak. FY2021 is a pandemic year and a partial rebound from FY2020's 627,728; FY2019, before the pandemic, already stood at 948,934, so most of the fall predates it. The fall is computed from two published table cells (about 71 percent), and part of it may reflect tighter participant definitions and federal performance reporting rather than lost provision; the table carries no note on definitional changes. The count covers only programmes reporting to the federal National Reporting System, not community college, employer or private adult learning, so it is not a national adult participation rate. Funding is shared between federal and state governments and the record does not attribute the decline to a single decision.
Experimentation
How easily can new approaches be attempted, tested, abandoned, and improved?
+0.7 over 10 years, from 50.8 in 2016 to 51.5 on 3 indicators seen in both years.
+5.9 over 20 years, from 45.6 in 2006 to 51.5 on 3 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 262244per million people
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.PAT.RESD)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 551764per million people
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.TMK.RSCT)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 21913per million people
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.IDS.RSCT)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 9864576per million people
- Year
- 2026. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- GitHub Innovation Graph (data/repositories.csv)
- History
- no data
Venture deals
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataper million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD / national VC associations
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The id keeps its first name so evidence records, links and published files still resolve. The row asked for venture capital deployed as a share of GDP, a level of financial depth of the kind private credit is (D122). A count of first rounds counts attempts started with outside risk money, which is what this capability asks about, and a large round counts once. Candidates, none wireable: the OECD SME and Entrepreneurship Financing scoreboard carried venture capital for 6 of the 16 countries the frame held on 2026-08-26, as amounts in national currency, latest year 2022, with Brazil, India, South Africa and Singapore absent (D21); national venture capital associations publish counts on their own definitions; commercial deal databases cover the world and are not inspectable (D10). Wireable on an inspectable deal count with one definition of a first round for half the frame or more. Read A1 before treating this dimension as measured.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 17.7% aged 18-64
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, TEA rate)
- History
- one year
perception proxyobserved
- Raw value
- 57.6% not deterred
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, fear of failure rate)
- History
- one year
Firms through regulatory sandboxes
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no datafirms per million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- national regulators
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the number and breadth of live sandboxes, which is a policy stock: a regime can exist with nobody in it. It now counts what passes through: firms a regulator let test under relaxed rules, and firms that came out, authorised, withdrawn or failed. Regulators publish cohort lists and exit reports one by one. The evidence corpus holds 22 records against this row, most of them counts of firms admitted or exited, each on the definition and window of its own regulator, and no register assembles them on one definition (O1 triage sweep, 2026-10-01). A realistic candidate for Envisioning to build from those lists. Wireable on a register that counts admissions and completions on one definition for half the frame or more.
University spinouts
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataper million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- national TTO associations
- History
- no data
Note: Reported nationally with incompatible definitions of what counts as a spinout.
Business share of R&D
capability inputretired, see notes- Raw value
- no data% of R&D
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD MSTI / RICYT
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-10-02. The only working source, OECD MSTI joined with RICYT for Latin America, covers 34 of the 53 countries then in the frame, but the row reads the make-up of a spending stock: who performs the R&D a country pays for. R&D spending itself is a condition since D122, and the share is high both where business research is large (Israel) and where total research is tiny and one firm dominates it (Thailand). State enterprises count as business, so China and Vietnam read their ownership model. UIS stopped publishing the series in 2023. Firms trying new things are read through patents, trademarks, designs and entrepreneurship instead. See D142.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
CFPB Compliance Assistance Sandbox, rescinded in 2022 and withdrawn again in 2025
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau opened a national Compliance Assistance Sandbox in September 2019, issued two sandbox approval orders in December 2020, terminated one of them in June 2022 and rescinded the policy with effect from 30 September 2022; a reissued version of January 2025 was withdrawn in May 2025.
2 approval orders, compliance assistance sandbox approval orders listed as granted, 2020-12. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Innovation: granted applications, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: A federal consumer-finance regulator offered firms a statutory safe harbour and a written approval that a described product complied with named laws, in exchange for sharing data during the test. A later leadership judged that the policies did not advance innovation and lacked transparency, let the information-collection authority lapse and rescinded the policy.
Limits: The count of two is ours, made by counting the approval orders the CFPB lists as granted (Payactiv and Synchrony Bank); the page also lists one template (Build Commonwealth) and separate No-Action Letters and Trial Disclosure waivers, which are not counted here. The rescission and the 2025 withdrawal are read from Federal Register notices on govinfo.gov (87 FR 58439, 90 FR 1974 and 90 FR 20086), not from the cited page. The CFPB page is blocked to some automated clients. Two approvals over three years is evidence that the federal consumer-finance sandbox barely operated before it was ended, not that it failed on its merits: the Bureau's stated reasons were that the policies did not advance consumer-beneficial innovation and failed to meet standards for transparency and stakeholder participation. State sandboxes (Arizona, Utah and others) are subnational and are not counted.
Adaptability
How effectively can the system respond when circumstances change?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 4.198% of labour force
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 13.8% of unemployed
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- ILOSTAT (DF_UNE_TUNE_SEX_AGE_DUR_NB)
- History
- one year
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.106index 0-1, lower = more diversified
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- UNCTAD (US.ConcentDiversIndices)
- History
- one year
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 2.02% of products not exported competitively at the start
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Harvard Growth Lab (hs92_country_product_year_4.csv (doi:10.7910/DVN/T4CHWJ))
- History
- one year
Disaster preparedness and recovery
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- INFORM / UNDRR
- History
- no data
Note: No source observes a country preparing for or recovering from a real shock. INFORM publishes its lack of coping capacity apart from hazard and exposure, but that dimension averages government self-assessments and governance perception indices with stocks such as roads, phones and physicians, which is the perception layer D23 retired plus conditions money buys (D122). Sendai and WHO reporting are governments grading themselves. A warning-reach survey item is a check candidate. See the disaster preparedness memo.
Institutional responsiveness
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No dataset exists. Measurable in principle from legislative and regulatory timestamps, which no one has assembled comparably.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Labour force participationWorld Bank (SL.TLF.ACTI.ZS), 2025
73.7 % aged 15+, rank 51 of 125. Share of the working-age population in the labour force.
A condition, not scored: how much of the population is in the labor force at all is what a country has to reallocate, a level set by norms, schooling and age, not a record of it reallocating (D141). Participation norms confound it, especially for India. Adaptability reads reallocation through long-term unemployment and export diversification instead.
Fixed broadband subscriptionsWorld Bank (IT.NET.BBND.P2), 2024
38.9 per 100 people, rank 18 of 125. Fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people.
A condition, not scored: installed infrastructure is what a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D122). Penalizes mobile-first countries such as India and South Africa.
Electricity transmission lossesWorld Bank (EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS), 2024
5.3 % of output, rank 23 of 117. Power lost in transmission and distribution, including unbilled use.
A condition, not scored: the state of the grid, and whether its operator can bill what it delivers, is infrastructure a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D141). Read it beside broadband, the other installed network beside Adaptability.
Informal employmentILOSTAT (DF_SDG_0831_SEX_ECO_RT)
No value for this country. Informal employment as a share of total employment, SDG indicator 8.3.1.
A condition, not scored: how much work carries no contract, registration or social protection describes the labor market a country reallocates through, not it reallocating (D150). Read it beside the unemployment rate: where most work is informal, a person who loses a job takes any work within weeks, so a low rate is not a fluid market. Its direction for Adaptability cannot be defended, since informal work is both the slack that absorbs a shock and the precarity that keeps a worker from moving up, so the rank orders values and is not a verdict. Comparability is weak: the European values come from an income survey (EU-SILC) with a proxy definition, and the rest from labor force or household surveys processed by the ILO. ILOSTAT has no value for the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Israel, Malaysia, China, the Philippines or Cuba, and some values are old (Haiti and Nicaragua 2012).
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
National Flood Insurance Program coverage, and its erosion
OpenFEMA's records of National Flood Insurance Program contracts in force fell from 4,667,875 on 31 December 2009 to 3,589,275 on 31 December 2025, a fall of about 23 percent in the federal flood insurance base over 16 years.
3,589,275 contracts, nfip policy contracts in force (openfema records active on the date), 2025-12-31. 4,667,875 contracts, nfip policy contracts in force at the first complete year-end in the dataset, 2009-12-31. FEMA, OpenFEMA NFIP Redacted Policies dataset (v3), retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: Congress created a federal insurer of last resort for flood, tied to community floodplain management and to a purchase requirement for federally backed mortgages in high-risk zones, so that recovery after floods would be paid for by premiums rather than only by disaster aid.
Limits: Both numbers are computed, not published headlines: they are the record counts the OpenFEMA API returns for policies whose effective date is on or before, and termination date after, each date, which is the method FEMA's own NFIP data FAQ gives. The 2009 figure comes from the same URL with the date changed to 2009-12-31. The count is of contracts, not policies: one condominium contract can cover many units, and FEMA's own 'NFIP by the Numbers' report for 31 August 2026 shows 3,388,273 contracts but 4,460,103 policies. The API count runs about 2 percent above FEMA's contracts-in-force report (3,589,275 against 3,512,555 for December 2025), so the level carries a small method error, though both ends use the same method. The dataset starts with policies effective in 2009, so the true earlier peak cannot be shown from it. The fall is not all lost protection: private flood insurance has grown, some properties left mapped flood zones, and Risk Rating 2.0 (2021) raised premiums by design to price risk. What the record shows is that the public programme's reach shrank, not that total insured flood exposure fell by the same amount.
Expanded Child Tax Credit of 2021, and its lapse
The American Rescue Plan, passed in March 2021, expanded the Child Tax Credit and made it payable monthly, and on 15 July 2021 the IRS paid roughly 15 billion dollars to families of nearly 60 million children; Congress did not extend the expansion beyond 2021.
60,000,000 children (nearly), eligible children in families paid in the first monthly payment, 2021-07-15. 15,000,000,000 US dollars (roughly), paid in the first monthly payment, 2021-07-15. US Department of the Treasury, press release of 15 July 2021, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: Congress turned an annual tax credit into a monthly payment and the IRS paid it automatically from prior-year tax returns, reaching most families within four months without a new application system.
Limits: The source is the Treasury announcing its own first payment, rounded ('nearly', 'roughly'), not an audited count. The four-month interval from the March 2021 law to the July payment is derived from the release's 'passed in March' and its date. The expansion was legislated for 2021 only and lapsed when Congress declined to extend it, so 'dismantled' records a decision not to continue rather than a repeal. The loss is documented by the Census Bureau, not by this source: in Poverty in the United States: 2022 (https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-280.html) the Supplemental Poverty Measure child poverty rate more than doubled, from 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022, and other programmes also expired in that year, so not all of the rise is the credit. Families the IRS could not find through prior tax filings were missed by the automatic payments.
Building
How capable is the country of turning plans and knowledge into functioning systems?
+0.4 over 10 years, from 55.6 in 2016 to 56.0 on 3 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 10.525% of GDP
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (NV.IND.MANF.ZS)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 24.323% of manufactured exports
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (TX.VAL.TECH.MF.ZS)
- History
Logistics infrastructure quality
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataindex 1-5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (LP.LPI.INFR.XQ)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. An LPI sub-index, so the same freight-forwarder survey as logistics performance and the same problem. Electricity connection speed stays as the observable infrastructure measure in this dimension. See D23.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 68.87score 0-100
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.ELC.TIME.DFRN)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 16.17index
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (EF.EFM.UNIV.XD)
- History
Large project delivery
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 2 records- Raw value
- no data% overrun
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: The single best measure of execution capability and there is no comparable international dataset. Assembling one is a defensible Envisioning project. Building mixes industrial output with state delivery capacity, and this indicator carries the delivery side: the other six indicators cannot see a national programme that was delivered. Documented deliveries are recorded in data/evidence and never scored, see D20.
Firm scale-up rate
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of firms
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD DynEmp
- History
- no data
Note: OECD business dynamics work covers members irregularly. Nothing comparable for India, Brazil or South Africa.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Output per workerWorld Bank (SL.GDP.PCAP.EM.KD), 2025
156,983 constant 2021 PPP $, rank 5 of 123. GDP per person employed, constant purchasing power parity.
A condition, not scored: output per worker is income per worker, the wealth the benchmark tests capability against, so it is published beside Building as context (D122).
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Measles elimination, and its erosion
The United States eliminated endemic measles transmission by 2000 through school-entry vaccination requirements, and falling coverage brought 2,777 confirmed cases by August 2026, the most since 1991, against 285 in all of 2024.
2,777 cases, confirmed measles cases in 2026, to 20 august, 2026-08. 285 cases, confirmed measles cases in the last pre-outbreak year, 2024. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, measles cases and outbreaks, retrieved 2026-08-27.
How it worked: The erosion is the mechanism recorded here: vaccination requirements are enforced at school entry by states, so a delivery that took federal purchasing and decades of practice is being undone state by state through widening exemption rules and falling trust, with no single decision anywhere.
Limits: A case count is the lagging end of the erosion; the leading end is kindergarten vaccination coverage, which CDC reports separately as falling from about 95 percent before the pandemic to under 93 percent, below the outbreak-prevention threshold. The 2026 number is a year in progress and will rise. Elimination status is a WHO-defined property of transmission chains, not of case counts, and had not been formally revoked at retrieval; what the record documents is a maintained public-health achievement being lost while the infrastructure that delivered it still exists.
Under the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the federal government and the states built the Interstate System. In nominal dollars, the estimated federal cost to complete it rose from $34 billion in the 1958 Interstate Cost Estimate to $114 billion in the final estimate of 1991.
114 USD billion, estimated federal cost to complete the interstate system, final (1991) interstate cost estimate, nominal, 1991. 34 USD billion, estimated federal cost to complete the interstate system, first (1958) interstate cost estimate, nominal, 1958. US Federal Highway Administration, Highway History: How many Interstate programs were there?, retrieved 2026-10-01.
How it worked: Congress set a 90 percent federal match paid from a dedicated Highway Trust Fund fed by fuel taxes, and the Bureau of Public Roads (later FHWA) apportioned it to state highway departments by repeated cost-to-complete estimates, which let the states build to one national standard on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Limits: Both figures are in dollars not adjusted for inflation, so the 235 percent rise we compute from them, (114-34)/34, is not a real cost overrun. FHWA itself attributes the growth to inflation, mileage added by Congress in 1968 and later, 'more safety and more attention to the environment' in later programs and 'changes in the definition of completion', as well as to the Interstate Program 'evolving'. The page gives no real-terms figure, no schedule baseline and no per-mile comparison, so it cannot separate execution failure from scope change. The 1958 ICE was a cost-to-complete estimate used to apportion funds, not a contract budget. The source gives no schedule baseline; the final estimate came 35 years after the Act. The source says later Interstate Programs have not ended, so 'concluded' refers to the end of Interstate Construction apportionments under ISTEA. The figures are federal share only.