What year does the Good Country Index refer to?

The Good Country Index rankings are based on 35 big datasets produced by United Nations agencies and other international organisations. Most of these datasets take several years to compile, analyse and publish, which is not surprising if you're collecting large amounts of complex data from nearly two hundred countries.

So, like most composite indexes of this sort, the Good Country Index doesn't attempt to measure the world in real time: there's always a delay of 2-3 years between data collection and the publication of the results. This is also the reason why we use version numbers, like "1.6" for each edition, instead of referring to "the 2024 Good Country Index".

So the latest edition of the Good Country Index (1.6) uses mostly 2022 data to provide a baseline. It’s as close as the available data allows to a complete portrait of the world at any point in time.