Large-scale monitoring in the DRC’s Ituri forest with a locally informed multidimensional well-being index

•Interest in multidimensional, participatory well-being metrics is rising but there are few large-scale examples from low-income contexts.•We present the Basic Necessities Survey as an approach to monitor well-being and share results from over 2,000 surveys in the DRC's Ituri province.•The well-being index varied with ethnicity, gender, and age of household heads; household composition and livelihood strategies; and geography.•From 2015 to 2019, changes in the index revealed a differentially experienced economic shock and showed expectations rising faster than assets.•This approach could be useful to other groups seeking practical instruments to produce flexible and regionally comparable well-being metrics.