The Legatum Prosperity Index™ is a unique and robust assessment of global wealth and wellbeing, which benchmarks 142 countries around the world in eight distinct categories: Economy; Education; Entrepreneurship & Opportunity; Governance; Health; Personal Freedom; Safety & Security; and Social Capital.

What is prosperity, and how it is achieved?

The Prosperity Index seeks to answer these two fundamental questions. Most people would intuitively agree that “prosperity” is not just about money but also about quality of life. The Index defines prosperity as both wealth and wellbeing, and finds that the most prosperous nations in the world are not necessarily those that have only a high GDP, but are those that also have happy, healthy, and free citizens.

Belows is a brief video introducing the Prosperity Index:


 
Barriers to prosperity

The Legatum Prosperity Index™ has this year for the first time redrawn the world map, pulling nations into new proximities based on shared attributes. The six new continents reveal that even the most robust economies face their own obstacles to achieving prosperity. The continents have been characterised as follows:

1.  Growth without Personal Freedom.
2.  Social Capital as a substitute for Governance.
3.  Long road to prosperity.
4.  Promising economies, unsafe countries.
5.  Good Education, poor Governance.
6.  Top performers.

Below is a short clip which shows the redrawn world map: