Key Finding
1. Entrepreneurship and opportunity correlate more closely to a nation’s overall prosperity than any other factor.
The overall Prosperity Index rankings correlate more closely to the Entrepreneurship & Opportunity (E&O) sub-index, than to any other sub-index. If we create an average ranking of only the income-related portions of all eight sub-indexes, the E&O sub-index still correlates with the overall rankings.
This implies that while other foundations such as health, education, social capital, or even the economy, are critical, levels of entrepreneurship and access to new opportunities actually provide the best proxy to understanding how prosperous a society can be. The E&O sub-index is an important gauge of the way in which a society commercialises innovation, encourages new businesses, and fosters a sense among its citizens that hard work is rewarding.
How well a country does in these areas goes a long way to explaining how well it will do promoting prosperity more generally.
Correlation between Entrepreneurship & Opportunity and Overall Prosperity
