How are you doing Alabama? Are you as an Alabamian as healthy, wealthy and as wise as you wish? Or, as least, are you keeping up with everyone else? A report out today may be able to help you answer that question.

The report is from

by the Social Science Research Council. It has created what it calls the American

Index, which attempts to answer the question "how are people doing." It says the index tries to measure and assess three goals all people share: "The ability to lead a long and healthy life, to have access to knowledge, and to have a decent material standard of living."

The index scores are set on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the best condition. The report's web site offers an

by nation, state and congressional district, plus 10 of the largest metro areas. The report's interactive section includes charts and other data that you can select and dig down into to learn more.

So how are we doing as a nation? As a state? Here's a breakout of the numbers for the nation, by overall score, and by each of the three basic index areas: Education, Health and Income. Remember it's a 10-point scale with 10 being the best.



National well-being -- 5.17

Education index -- 5.15

Health index -- 5.25

Income index -- 5.09

Alabama's well-being: -- 4.09

Education index -- 4.25

Health index -- 3.83

Income index -- 4.18

As you can see, here in Alabama we're not doing as well as the nation overall, but thank God for Mississippi (and several other states) which has an overall score of 3.93.

And as the report also points out, well-being is often unequally experienced by relative neighbors. Consider the index numbers below which are from metro Birmingham's 6th and 7th Congressional Districts. The 6th is represented by Rep. Spencer Bachus and contains most of the metro area's over-the-mountain communities while the 7th, which is soon to be represented by Terri Sewell, includes much of the city of Birmingham and a slice of the Alabama's Black Belt region. The 6th district's scores are Alabama's highest across the index while the 7th has some of the state's lower scores.

6th Congressional District: 5.30

Education index -- 5.67

Health index -- 4.05

Income index -- 6.02

7th Congressional District: 3.46

Education index -- 3.71

Health index -- 3.63

Income index -- 3.03

The authors generated their report using 2008 census data for education and earnings and calculated life expectancy using data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They've also included a online Well-O-Meter to where you can answer a series of questions and come up with your own, personal human development level score.