Brain Capital

Brain Capital is a productive and complex capital stock that accumulates over the lifecycle. It is a multi-dimensional set of factors varying from physical to socio-cultural ones, enabling the brain to remain healthy, develop, and avoid deterioration. The policies guiding the development of both the natural and socio-cultural environments are important drivers of Brain Capital since they could either favour or impede its development.

The Brain Capital concept aims at providing a better understanding of the economic value that can be derived through identifying and unlocking latent human potential.

EMEA and the WG4BCI developed a dashboard to monitor Brain Capital Development worldwide. The monitor is based on this picture:

“Brains make the world go around. Brain Capital drives economic empowerment, social resilience and emotional connection and, remarkably, is not captured by GDP measures.” 


George Vradenburg, Convenor of the Davos Alzheimer's Collaborative and CEOi 

The dashboard is composed of three main pillars:  two main dimensions of Brain Capital, health and skills, and the key drivers that can boost or deteriorate brain capital.

Brain Health Pillar is focused on the monitoring of people’s overall health status and mental health, and the capacity of the healthcare systems to reach citizens of all ages, genders, and sex. The key indicators to be monitored under this pillar relate to the absence of disorders (e.g., suicide rate), the typical aspects related to health over life (e.g., maternal mortality, child mortality rate, the prevalence of dementia).

Brain Skills Pillar monitors problem-solving ability, flexibility in thinking, emotional/social intelligence, creativity, design-thinking, agency/control (including self-control), confidence, hope and the sense of purpose and meaning in life (eudaemonic dimension of happiness). It will also measure the hedonic dimension of happiness, including mood, worry and other related variables available from the World Happiness Report.

The pillar of the main drivers for brain capital development is related to the environment (i.e. pollution), services (i.e. access to healthcare), as also key socio-economic and demographic factors (i.e. poverty, inequality, urbanization).

X