How prosperous is Greece?

A look into Legatum’s Prosperity Index.

The Legatum Institute recently published the Prosperity Index for 2023. Naturally, I was very curious to find out how Greece fared this year and what its progress has been during the past decade. The results surprised me, and they might surprise you too.

The Legatum Prosperity Index

Developed by the Legatum Institute, the Legatum Prosperity Index is an annual ranking that measures the levels of prosperity in the world across a number of dimensions. The ranking is based on a variety of factors including wealth, economic growth, education, health, personal well-being, and quality of life.

The report has been continuously published since 2007 and has gradually expanded its coverage from 50 countries in the beginning to 167 today.

While there are many other rankings, data and indicators (lagging or leading) that can be leveraged and synthesized together to understand the full picture of a country’s prosperity levels, Legatum’s Prosperity Index offers a long-standing and well-respected metric that can quickly offer valuable insights for anyone trying to understand whether and how countries are becoming more prosperous.

In Legatum’s words:

The Legatum Prosperity Index™ is a framework that assesses countries on the promotion of their residents’ flourishing, reflecting both economic and social wellbeing. It captures the richness of a truly prosperous life, moving beyond traditional macroeconomic measurements of a nation’s prosperity, which rely solely on indicators of wealth such as average income per person (GDP per capita).

To get a sense of the comprehensiveness of the Prosperity Index, it uses 300 different indicators from over 70 different data sources. At a very high level, these are then aggregated in three domains essential to prosperity: Inclusive Societies, Open Economies, and Empowered People. Each domain is then further segmented into four fundamental pillars of prosperity, for a total of 12 pillars, as you can see below.

Source: The Legatum Prosperity Index (2023)

What is the prosperity level of Greece?

A lot has been said about the level of prosperity in Greece. The devastating decade-long crisis that engulfed the country since 2008 has been the subject of countless analyses through the years, and its consequences are still felt across a number of dimensions in the life of everyday Greeks.

So, what does the Prosperity Index tell us about Greece?

Despite facing two periods of sustained decline (a deep one during 2008-2013, leading to its worst score on record, and a shorter one during 2015-2019), it seems that the prosperity levels in Greece have been continuously improving in the past 5 years.

In fact, Greece hit an all-time-high in its personal score of prosperity in 2023 and it currently ranks 40th in the world (vs. 167 other countries), a substantial improvement from its all-time-low rank of 44 in 2019.

Not bad for a country that only recently suffered the greatest depression of all time.

How is Greece faring across different pillars of prosperity?

At face value, the prosperity score and ranking of Greece shows improvement. But what about the constituent parts of the index? A look across the scores of all 12 pillars show that every single prosperity pillar has improved during the past 5 years.

While there is a lot of room to grow across all dimensions, it is quite interesting to note that Greece is continuously moving up and leaving behind the all-time-lows of each individual prosperity pillar.

However, comparing Greece to itself (i.e. looking at its own individual progress) is only one side of the coin. We also have to look at the country’s rankings in each of the 12 pillars during the same period in order to better understand how the country is faring compared to the rest of the world.

The results are a bit more mixed in this case, especially since the rest of the world has not only caught up to Greece, but in many cases also moved ahead while Athens was too focused in dealing with the consequences of the artificial profligacy that led to the crisis in the first place.

Still, Greece improved its rank across 9 out of 12 pillars between 2019 and 2023, which points to the comparative progress that it started achieving once more.

What does this all mean?

Well, did Greece solve all of its problems? Hardly. Does this mean that Greece is a prosperous mecca of life for everyone? Definitely not. There is still enormous work that needs to be done across all dimensions of the Prosperity Index, primarily when it comes to the fair and equitable sharing of prosperity across the Greek society.

Nevertheless, what the Prosperity Index is showing us is that Greece is in fact continuously doing better, improving markedly both against its own past performance as well as gradually against the rest of the world.

While there is no room for complacency or undue celebrations, it is important to be aware of Greece’s progress, so that policymakers double down on the efforts that are having a positive impact and focus more on the areas the country is still lagging.

Let’s hope we see this trend continue. Fingers crossed!