The Warsaw Enterprise Institute, building on previous achievements in this area, has created its own measure, the Wealth of Nations Index, which – as the author of the method and calculations, economist Karol Zdybel, explains – attempts to measure the stream of economic benefits per citizen of each EU country over the course of a year. Our indicator takes into account the level of private spending in the economy and public spending. We assume that private spending, as that which is sovereignly decided by citizens, is optimal. The government would not do anything better with this money. On the other hand, we evaluate public spending in terms of its quality, not its nominal value, based on the assumption that more does not necessarily mean better. We constructed the index in such a way as to free it from the accusation of “bias” – we gave government spending a certain bonus, described in the section on methodology.

The project has a dedicated website with an interactive module, thanks to which you can adjust the indicator to your own preferences.