Correlates of the Good Society Index in the 2020s

The Good Society Index (GSI) has been updated using the latest available data for 2021.

In a good society, newborn babies should survive, people should grow to be old, and in between birth and death, people should feel they have a good life.

The Good Society Index continues to measure how well countries support the well-being and quality of life of their people, based on three basic ideas:

• Focusing on Essentials: The index looks at components that focus on essential characteristics of human life; health, mortality and happiness.
• Keeping It Simple: It uses only a few important measures to make it easier to interpret.
• A Nuanced Picture: It combines both facts (objective data) and feelings (subjective data) to get a more complete view of how a society is doing.

Following the work of the GSI 2007 (Holmberg, 2007) and 2014 (Holmberg and Rothstein, 2014), the GSI 2025 uses three key indicators:

• Infant Mortality: Data from the World Bank (World Development Indicators, 2024).
• Life Expectancy: Also from the World Bank (World Development Indicators, 2024).
• Subjective well-being: Based on the World Happiness Report (2023).

Each countrys ranking on these three indicators is combined to create its GSI score. All indicators are weighted equally, and the index is based on rank order, not exact numbers. The ranks are added up and averaged to give a score, ranging from 1 (best) to 148 (worst).

The GSI shows how close or far countries are from achieving a good society compared to others. However, it does not measure exactly how good or bad each country is; it simply ranks them.

The 2025 Good Society Index provides an updated, easy-to-understand way to compare countries and inspire action to improve global well-being.