The Netherlands wins 7th place in the World Economic Forum’s Inclusive Growth and Development Index (IDI).

The report ranked a total of 109 countries, basing their results on many economic factors to indicate an overall assessment of living standards for each participating country.

The index also gives a five-year overview in order to allow people to understand the state of growth around the world. 

Inclusive growth factors

The IDI based their findings on three main pillars including Growth and Development, Inclusion and Intergenerational Equity and Sustainability.

These then broke down to include 12 Key Performance Indicators of inclusive development so that a countries growth assessment was not solely based on its GDP.

The indictors ranged from the employment rate, to income and savings, the rate of inequality and poverty, life expectancy, demographic dependency ratio, public debt, carbon intensity, and then of course, took into account GDP growth per capita.

How the Netherlands scored

Whilst the Netherlands scored high this year, when reviewing statistics of the past five years, the Netherlands is down 1,69 percent, only reaching 21st place.

Still, the Netherlands scored particularly well on its accessibility and quality of education, its infrastructure, as well as on entrepreneurship and capital growth, but lacked in real economy investments. It’s overall quality of life and healthcare services ranked rather average.

The overall trend

According to the World Economic Forum, who meet in Davos in Switzerland to discuss the results and make proposals based on their findings, almost half of all the participating countries saw a decrease in their IDI score despite a rise in their GDP growth per capita.

This was largely due to wealth inequality, which according to the study, saw a 6,3 percent increase in the past five years amongst more than three quarters of the world’s economies.

Needless to say, most of these were so called "advanced" countries. For example, the world's largest economy, the United States, came in at 23rd place on the IDI, below "developing" countries like Estonia and the Czech Republic.

Statistically, 51 out of the 109 countries saw their scores decline over the past five years, raising public concern over the challenges facing policy-makers to translate economic growth into social progress.

Top 10 countries

Here are the top 10 advanced countries of the world:
1. Norway
2. Luxembourg
3. Switzerland
4. Iceland
5. Denmark
6. Sweden
7. The Netherlands
8. Australia
9. New Zealand
10. Austria

Top 10 of developing countries

Here are the top 10 developing countries of the world:
1. Lithuania
2. Azerbaijan
3. Hungary
4. Poland
5. Romania
6. Uruguay
7. Latvia
8. Panama
9. Costa Rica
10. Chile

Find your country's rank

Find out where your own country ranks amongst the 109 participants, or a more detailed break down of the Netherlands.