Private capital can help drive a recovery from the ‘stagnation’ of global social progress that has followed the pandemic, according to a new report from AlTi Tiedemann Global.
The report, which was jointly produced by the international wealth management giant alongside the non-profit Social Progress Imperative, identified four key areas with scope for philanthropists and impact investors to make the biggest difference: health, rights, sustainability and gender equity.
The conclusions were just one element of the 2025 AlTi Global Social Progress Index, which analysed 170 countries across indicators including health, safety, education, infrastructure and human rights. The authors describe it as ‘the most comprehensive and rigorous assessment of the wellbeing of a society’.
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Norway took first place in the index, scoring 91.95 out of a possible 100 points. Three other Nordic nations (Denmark, Finland, Sweden) rounded out the top four, with Switzerland in fifth place. The UK was 20th, while the US languished in 32nd place – below Cyprus, Lithuania and neighbour Canada.
The report defines social progress as ‘the capacity of a society to meet the basic human needs of its citizens, establish the building blocks that allow citizens and communities to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives, and create the conditions for all individuals to reach their full potential’.
While there is a correlation between per-capita GDP and individual countries’ scores on the social progress index, the authors of the report stressed that their index is ‘explicitly focused on non-economic aspects of performance’.
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Three dimensions of social progress
The 2025 AlTi Global Social Progress Index tracks the performance of 170 countries from 2011 to 2024 across key drivers of social progress. It combines 57 social and environmental outcome indicators to calculate an overall score for each country, based on measures in health, safety, education, rights, and more.
The report's framework includes three dimensions of social progress: Basic Needs, Foundations of Wellbeing, and Opportunity. Under each dimension are four components which are defined by outcome indicators. The score is a weighted average of these indicators.
AlTi Tiedemann Global CEO Mike Tiedemann told Spear’s that there had historically been a ‘dearth of data’ to guide decisions in impact investing and heralded the power of data to guide future investments in the space.
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‘As advisors, it's important for us to remove any and all political sensibilities related to these potential investments or potential investment solutions and to really focus on what outcomes you're driving towards and for what purpose you're driving towards them,’ he said.
‘Impact investing is highly personalised,’ added Tiedemann. ‘Each family, and individual members with a single family often have different initiatives that they want to pursue. They have different emotional responses and intellectual interests in various areas.’
‘We’re trying to be really responsive and to be effective as we possibly can be by providing potential investment solutions that address the things that our families wish to address.’
Tiedemann emphasised the report’s potential to shape impact investing and philanthropic decision making, adding that ‘private capital has the power to make a tangible difference to the world’s most pressing problems. The Index shines a light on the specific areas where private capital can make the biggest difference, at a time when the world has plateaued on social progress. We hope that the Index will serve as an actionable and practical tool to drive faster social progress for the benefit of all.’
Read the full report here: The 2025 AlTi Global Social Progress Index
