The Legatum Institute is a leading advocate for a holistic understanding of Prosperity, one that combines wealth and wellbeing as measures of individual and national prosperity.
The Legatum Prosperity Index is the world’s only global assessment of wealth and wellbeing. Now in its fourth year, the Index analyses 110 nations covering more than 90% of the world’s population. It starts with a holistic definition of prosperity that includes both material wealth and quality of life, and then employs a rigorous set of estimation methods to determine which factors matter most to nations’ overall prosperity.
Most people would intuitively agree that "prosperity" is not just money but also quality of life. The Prosperity Index is the first global index that provides an empirical basis for this belief. It finds that successful countries enjoy a "virtuous cycle" of economic liberty and growth, political freedom and good governance, and enterprising and happy citizens, which mutually reinforce each other on the path to prosperity.
Rather than replicating other measurements that rank countries by their actual levels of wealth, life satisfaction, or development, the Prosperity Index produces rankings based on the foundations of prosperity. These are the factors that help drive economic growth or produce happy citizens in a given country. The Index provides a framework for assessing global prosperity that we hope will be of use to policymakers, scholars, businesses, and the globally curious for years to come.
Please click here to go to the Index website.
The Legatum Institute's second annual Prosperity Symposium brought together leading scholars in an effort to understand and advance the best ideas on holistic prosperity in a time of economic turmoil and uncertainty. Speakers included Paul Kennedy, Paul Collier, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Walter Russell Mead, Robert Putnam, Luigi Zingales, and others.
For more information on the Prosperity Symposium, please click here.
My Prosperity
The Personal Prosperiscope offers an easy-to-understand introduction to a fascinating new area of research popularly known as the 'science of happiness'.
Researchers in this field use statistical analysis of survey results to link individuals' subjective wellbeing, or happiness, with their demographic characteristics, place of residence, personal beliefs, work history, relationship status, and other factors.
The Personal Prosperiscope identifies the factors that may be increasing or reducing your happiness based on your responses to approximately 40 survey questions.
Please visit www.MyProsperity.com to take the survey.