Elite Quality Index 2025

The Elite Quality Index 2025: The Sustainable Value Creation of Nations (EQx2025), the leading global political economy index, is a comparative ranking measuring the sustainability of nations that assesses whether elites create value and expand a nation’s knowledge capabilities or use their power to rent seek and maximize their own profits by transferring value from their stakeholders. The EQx2025 uses 149 indicators to analyze 151 countries and measures conceptual elements such as Power, Creative Destruction, and Unearned Income to determine whether the elites of a given country create or extract value from their nation. Elites are defined as those that lead a society’s most important business models and range from technology giants to labor unions, with members including business, political, and knowledge elites. Their collective coordination capacity helps them to leverage their power and influence over institutions. A nation’s elite system and its most powerful business models are essential for value creation and economic and human development. The report describes high-quality elites as those that can increase or grow the overall size of the economic pie, while low-quality elites use their power advantages to grow their own slice at the cost of others.