The Legatum Institute just launched the Legatum Prosperity Index 2014. This is an annual ranking of 142 countries and is based on a number of factors including Economy, Governance, Personal Freedom, Education, Health, Entrepreneurship and Opportunity, Safety and Security and Social Capital. Across these categories, 89 variables are used to make scores and rankings
Ranking by year
The rank of Bangladesh came down one place to 104 among 142 nations. Amongst some of the peer countries in South and South-East Asia, India, Pakistan and Vietnam saw their rankings improve. Sri Lanka’s ranking dropped two places. Nevertheless, between these countries Sri Lanka and Vietnam boast far superior rankings of 62 and 56 respectively. India and Bangladesh rank closely at 102 and 104. Pakistan lags behind significantly at 127.
Bangladesh Ranking by Segment (2014)
Within the categories, the ranking for Bangladesh differs vastly. Bangladesh seems to rank highly in terms of Security and Economy. In the other categories however the rank remains close to overall Prosperity rank of 104. The lowest rank comes in ‘Personal Freedom’ which is fairly surprising to me.
Note that the rankings are all relative to other countries. Thus numbers can look a bit off on first glance. Having said that, I do also feel that making such global ranking is not an easy job under any circumstances and needs to do a lot of generalization. In particular, for the less developed countries getting reasonably accurate data for 89 different variables will always be a challenge. However, we can always look at a variety of independent rankings to come to a conclusion. For example, the World Bank’s Doing Business Rankings can fit well with the Legatum Prosperity Index.
