Key Finding

1. Prosperous countries are strong across the board

The world's most prosperous countries are successful because they have strong and broad foundations and are generally doing well across all nine areas of prosperity with very little variation between each area. For example, Finland ranks first overall despite not having the highest score in any of the sub-indexes.

Sixteen of the top 20 countries in the Prosperity Index rank in the world's top 20 countries with the highest per capita GDP as well as the highest average life satisfaction scores in the Gallup World Poll.

INSIGHT: Middle and low income countries have much wider variances in their sub-index scores. The less prosperous the country, the more it will be subject to large differences between its performance in one area, such as social capital, and another, such as governance.