The IMT will focus on income distribution equality. Although consumption is certainly critical to the modern capitalist economy, we have seen that putting primacy on its value results in negative effects such as rising household debt levels, environmental degradation through planned obsolescence, and deterioration in social capital. Thus the IMT focuses on income. As well, the index is more interested in discrepancy of income distribution than it is in per capita income growth. Perpetual growth in a system of finite resources is not possible, and should therefore not be expected. Economies attempting to base success in sustainability will not be penalized for that fact in the IMT.
Individual annual income (due to wages or capital income) will be analyzed for percentage of individuals within one, two and three standard deviations of the mean as well as for the dataset's skewness and kurtosis.
Finally, the year over year movement in income distribution equality will be quantified into the current year's rating.
Ecological
Most environmental indicators of human progress (for indices where these are present at all) are based in what we might call ‘shallow' sustainability. Shallow sustainability is characterized by an anthropocentric perspective of means and ends. Sustainable development is "defined as development that meets the needs of the current generation while maintaining opportunities for future generations to meet their own needs" (Henderson, 1996). However, the phenomenon of human adaptability might mean that all but the most egregious alterations in the ecosphere will still allow future humans to meet their needs. For instance, Bluefin tuna is now on the brink of extinction due entirely to overfishing. But, of course, humanity will easily adapt to the absence of this animal - it will simply disappear from menus. Future generations of humans will continue to meet their needs - but that hardly qualifies this as a case of sustainable development.
In order to de-anthropocentrify ecological sustainability, we ought to begin looking at our environment as having intrinsic value, rather than a more or less critical resource for our own exploitation. The IMT measures ‘deep sustainability' by including biodiversity as the primary factor of ecological thriving. The indicators will include locally relevant endangered species; penalize extinctions or additions to the list, and reward removal from the list