2021 Legatum Prosperity Index™
The Legatum Prosperity Index™ has been designed to be a transformational tool to help enable targeted policy responses that can drive tangible improvements in prosperity.
The Legatum Prosperity Index™ has been designed to be a transformational tool to help enable targeted policy responses that can drive tangible improvements in prosperity.
A report for the Legatum Prosperity Index™ programme
Published 15 Nov 2021
The 15th edition of the Legatum Prosperity Index™
The Legatum Prosperity Index™ analyses the performance of 167 nations across 67 policy-focused elements, measured by 300 country-level indicators. The Index enables us to construct a thoroughly comprehensive picture of prosperity, across its institutional, economic, and social dimensions. It is our ambition that leaders around the world will use the Index to help set their agendas for growth and development, and that it will enable others to hold them to account.
The indicators used in the Index are organised into 12 pillars which are grouped into three domains essential to prosperity:
Using the Prosperity Index framework, nations around the world can assess their strengths and weaknesses in order to determine the economic and strategic choices that need to be made to drive greater levels of prosperity.
Having seen global prosperity improve steadily between 2015 and 2019, this year’s Legatum Prosperity Index finds that prosperity has plateaued for the second year running.
Whilst the plateauing of prosperity has been caused — at least in part — by the health and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has also been driven by the concerning erosion of many of the core features that underpin prosperity. Specifically, we have seen an ongoing deterioration in Political Accountability and Freedom of Speech and Assembly in most regions of the world.
We have also seen prosperity stall for the second successive year in the world’s two most prosperous regions (North America and Western Europe), while in the least prosperous region (sub-Saharan Africa), it has improved for the 11th year in a row.
The Index shows that, overall, Denmark is the most prosperous country in the world, followed by Norway and Sweden. North America remains the most prosperous region, followed by Western Europe and Eastern Europe.
To learn more about prosperity and explore how the regions and individual countries around the world perform across the 12 pillars of prosperity, download the 2021 report or visit prosperity.com.
The 15th edition of the Legatum Prosperity Index™
Nov 2021
Download the reportPDF 24 MB