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The Five Pillars Index: 2025 Global Edition

June 2025 - Whitepaper by G.O.A.L.

Executive Summary

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For decades, countries have been benchmarked by GDP, HDI, and partial wellbeing indicators. But as outlined in the Executive Summary (page 2), these metrics reveal only fragments of a society’s true strength. GDP measures output, not capability. HDI tracks education and income, but not physical vitality, resilience, or daily life conditions. ESG frameworks are corporate tools, not national measures of human foundations. As a result, nations have been steering progress with an incomplete compass.

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The Five Pillars Index: 2025 Global Edition introduces the first measurement framework designed to capture the core architecture of human vitality.


Built on the Five Pillars of Health — Nutrition, Movement, Knowledge, Mindset, and Environment — the Index evaluates upstream determinants of thriving rather than downstream symptoms of decline.

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The 2025 Edition provides:

  • A predictive national vitality model based on leading indicators (pages 5–6)

  • A global ranking of countries across all Five Pillars (pages 7–8)

  • Pillar-by-pillar deep dives with sub-indicators and weighting logic (pages 9–23)

  • Regional strengths, weaknesses, and trend analyses (pages 24–28)

  • A full methodology guide for governments and institutions (pages 29–33)

  • A roadmap for integrating the Index into national planning (pages 34–36)

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The goal is simple: reframe human progress around vitality, resilience, and long-term capability — and equip governments, cities, and institutions with a metric that matches the complexity of modern challenges.

Key Insights

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1. Current global indices capture outputs — not the foundations that drive them.
GDP, HDI, and wellbeing metrics miss critical human determinants such as mental resilience, physical activity, sleep, micronutrient status, environmental safety, and social cohesion (pages 5–7).

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2. The Five Pillars Index measures what actually predicts future success.
The framework uses upstream indicators — nutrition quality, movement patterns, cognitive development, psychological stability, environmental conditions — making it predictive rather than retrospective (pages 5–6).

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3. Nations with strong Pillar scores enjoy better innovation, productivity, demographics, and stability.
Cross-country patterns show that vitality drives economic and social outcomes more reliably than GDP per capita (pages 24–28).

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4. Weakness in even one Pillar erodes long-term national performance.
Countries with strong education but low mental health, or strong healthcare but poor movement and nutrition, demonstrate stagnation or decline (pages 10–23).

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5. The Index enables evidence-based national strategy.
Governments can identify structural weaknesses early and invest in upstream conditions that compound across generations (pages 29–36).

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Global Insights at a Glance

The Five Pillars Index provides a predictive map of global human vitality. The four visuals below offer a concise overview of how nations perform across the full framework and two of its most strategically important pillars.

1. Global Rankings — Overall Vitality Performance

This map presents the complete global distribution of Five Pillars Index scores. 
Countries in the 8–10 range demonstrate strong or elite foundational health systems, while those scoring 5 or below face structural challenges across nutrition, movement, knowledge, mindset, or environmental stability. The pattern reveals a widening gap between high-capacity nations and regions with persistent systemic vulnerabilities.

2. Top 10 & Bottom 10 — Global Outliers

This snapshot highlights the world’s strongest and weakest performers.
Top-tier countries combine high resilience, strong social and environmental stability, and robust life-cycle health behaviors. In contrast, bottom-tier nations exhibit chronic instability across multiple pillars, often driven by environmental fragility, low psychological well-being, and inconsistent knowledge ecosystems. These outliers illustrate how deeply upstream determinants shape long-term national outcomes.

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3. Environment Rankings — Structural Stability & Support

The Environment Pillar reflects the physical, ecological, and infrastructural conditions that shape daily life.
High-scoring nations demonstrate strong safety profiles, cleaner air, stable infrastructure, and reliable public services. Mid-range countries show uneven or emerging systems, while low-performers face chronic instability, environmental degradation, or fragile public infrastructure. This pillar often predetermines the ceiling for progress across all others.

4. Mindset Rankings — Resilience & Psychological Foundations

The Mindset Pillar captures population-level resilience, stress loads, mental health, and psychological stability.
It is one of the most geographically uneven pillars, with clear divides between high-resilience regions and nations facing widespread stress, uncertainty, or low life satisfaction. Because mindset shapes decision-making, productivity, and long-term health behaviors, it is among the strongest predictors of future national trajectory.

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What’s Inside

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  1. Introduction

  2. Methodology & Scoring Framework

    1. North America

    2. Central America & Caribbean

    3. South America

    4. Europe

    5. Africa

    6. Middle East & Central Asia

    7. East Asia

    8. Southeast Asia

    9. Oceania

  3. Global Patterns & Lessons

  4. Global Rankings

  5. Top 10 & Bottom 10 Regions

  6. Future Vision

Who This Is For

 

This whitepaper is designed for:

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  • National governments and ministries of health, education, welfare, and finance

  • Policy strategists and long-term planning units

  • International organizations (World Bank, OECD, UNDP, WHO)

  • Think tanks and academic institutions

  • City governments and regional planning authorities

  • Foundations & NGOs working in wellbeing, global development, and inequality

  • Private-sector strategists interested in long-term human capital trends

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If you work with health, development, or national planning — this Index is designed for you.

Applications & Use Cases

 

Governments can use the Index to:

  • Benchmark national vitality against global peers

  • Identify structural weaknesses early

  • Guide strategic policy investment across education, health, and environment

  • Prioritize upstream interventions with the highest long-term return

  • Embed Five Pillars logic into long-term development plans

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International institutions can use it to:

  • Compare structural readiness across countries

  • Shape multi-year development funding

  • Support vulnerable nations with predictive early-warning signals

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NGOs and philanthropic foundations can:

  • Target regions with the highest marginal impact

  • Build programs aligned with Pillar-specific weaknesses

  • Track improvements over time with a standardized methodology

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Researchers & universities can:

  • Study correlations between vitality and economic outcomes

  • Integrate Pillar indicators into longitudinal social science work

  • Build new models for human development

Author’s Note

 

“The world measures prosperity through income, but it is vitality that determines whether societies truly thrive. The Five Pillars Index is an attempt to shift our global compass — from output to capability, from symptoms to foundations. I offer this as a tool for nations seeking to redesign their trajectories for the century ahead.”


— Mika Kunne, Founder of G.O.A.L.

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Download the Full Whitepaper

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Download the full PDF with all frameworks, charts, case studies, and strategy blueprints.

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