Report: quality of life and wellbeing stagnated in 2023 worldwide and in Romania

The global quality of life and well-being stagnated in 2023, according to the latest edition of the Social Progress Index ranking, which assesses the quality of life and social well-being of 170 countries and is conducted by the non-profit organization Social Progress Imperative with the support of Deloitte. Romania followed the trend, ranking 44th in the recently released list.

The Social Progress Index (SPI) measures the quality of life and social well-being of citizens from 170 countries, based on the analysis of three main dimensions. The methodology consists of assigning a score for basic needs category items - nutrition and medical care, water and sanitation, housing and safety -, for wellbeing category items - basic education, information and communications, health and environmental quality - and for opportunities category – rights and voice, freedom and choice, inclusive society and advanced education. Based on the score, the countries in the ranking are grouped into six categories arranged in descending order.

Over time, the world has improved in terms of social progress from 58.34 in 2011, when the study was conducted for the first time, to 63.44 at the end of 2023, but this is almost flat compared to 2022’s index of 63.75, as the majority of world countries registered stagnation or even decline last year, the study shows.

Romania followed the trend and advanced from an index of 71.52 in 2011, to 75.24 in 2023, which is also slightly lower than the previous year’s 76.89. The country ranks 44th among the 170 analyzed states and remains in the second category of the ranking, after Argentina, Barbados, and Bulgaria.

The study includes six categories of countries, and Romania has advanced to the second one in 2022.

“This latest edition of the report unfortunately confirms the previous edition’s predictions and shows that, in 2023, the global social progress index paused its increase for the first time since the analysis was published. Amid challenges deriving from economic instability, geopolitical tensions, and climate change, more than three-quarters of the assessed countries, which corresponds to four out of five people in the world, saw stagnation or even a decline in their social progress, driven mainly by two of the analyzed dimensions - access to advanced education and environmental quality,” said Alexandru Reff, Country Managing Partner, Deloitte Romania and Moldova.

The Deloitte analysis highlights that foreign direct investment, economic growth, and social progress are interdependent and create a virtuous circle only if additional steps are also taken, such as facilitating and strategically directing the investment flow to certain industries and regions.

Romania “registered one of the highest EU growth paces in GDP per capita over the past decade, but is still marked by development differences between the urban and the rural areas and also among the regions,” Reff added.