APN Social Capital Index™ (Composite)
The APN Social Capital Index™ combines five independently-built pillars into a single locality-level reading of social capital robustness, scored for every populated locality in Australia from Tier 1 administrative and census data — not a survey, not a subjective wellbeing score.
This is a cross-sectional index, not a time series. Every locality carries its own score at a fixed reference vintage; there is no single national “current reading” the way a national indicator has one.
Equal-weighted across five pillars, with a 3-of-5 floor: a locality scores on the composite once at least three pillars have a valid reading for it.
Distribution peaks in the 50–55 band; a genuine population histogram from live certified scores, not an illustrative curve.
Agora (amenity & access, mean 41.33) is nationally the weakest pillar by a clear margin — more than one standard deviation below the composite mean. Substrate (climate resilience, mean 63.68) is the strongest, and the only pillar with a floor above 26.
The composite’s national mean of 51.13 sits close to the simple pillar-average midpoint, consistent with the equal-weight, 3-of-5-floor construction: a locality needs only three of five pillars to generate a composite reading, so a weak pillar like Agora pulls down the localities it covers without being smoothed away by the other four.
- Current methodology: equal-weight, 3-of-5 pillar floor (interim standard)
- All five pillars are independently certified and included in the composite
- Inter-branch weighting study remains open, filed as separate future work
