A moment worth listening to
Since mid-September, high school and university students across France have been in the streets. On October 6, they marched in Paris from Place de la République to Place de la Nation. The Interior Ministry counted 266,000 demonstrators across France that day, including 56,000 in Paris. Organizers put the total at 450,000. Two days later, thousands gathered again at Place de la Bastille.
Their demands are clear and specific. They want more teachers, better facilities, and smaller classes.
But the movement has grown beyond the classroom. Childcare workers went on strike. A public services union filed a strike notice for the whole month in solidarity. Students and education unions have called another national day of action for October 13. A separate national protest over the cost of living and fuel prices is planned for October 17. When a protest about school resources draws in this many people, it is fair to ask whether something deeper is being expressed.
What the usual measures tell us
By the measures most often used to judge a country, France is doing well. Its GDP per person is about $47,000. It is one of the world’s largest and most productive economies.
France also looks strong on entrepreneurship. In the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, the largest international survey of entrepreneurs, about 9 percent of French adults start or run a new business. On innovation, meaning new businesses that offer something new to the country or the world, France’s normalized innovation score is roughly twice the median of the 43 economies studied.
A reader looking only at these numbers would see a wealthy, creative, enterprising nation. That reading is not wrong. It is incomplete.
Why the HCE Index was created
Most measures of a nation count activity. GDP counts what is produced. Entrepreneurship surveys count how many businesses are started. Neither asks whether that activity improves people’s lives.
The Human-Centered Entrepreneurship Index was created to ask that question. It measures two things at once across 43 economies. The first is entrepreneurial dynamism: how much people innovate, take risks, and act on opportunity. The second is human flourishing, measured through three conditions the index calls empathy (people are thriving and hopeful), enablement (they have steady work), and empowerment (they feel engaged in that work).
The index measures both dimensions together, so it can show when entrepreneurial strength masks weaker human flourishing. Business activity without flourishing is not human-centered, however impressive it looks on its own.
What the HCE Index showed in June
The HCE Index was launched at the United Nations on June 26, 2026, nearly three months before the first student blockades. Its entrepreneurship side draws on the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Its flourishing side draws on the Gallup World Poll, which surveys adults in more than 140 countries about their lives and work.
For France, the two sides point in opposite directions. On every entrepreneurship measure, France scores above the median of the 43 economies studied. On every flourishing measure, it falls below that median. These economies include both advanced and emerging economies, rather than only OECD members or countries with economic conditions similar to France.
| Measure | What it captures | France (0–100) | 43-economy sample median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Innovation | New products for the country or world | 50.7 | 25.1 |
| Risk-Taking | Acting despite fear of failure | 42.3 | 27.2 |
| Pro-Activeness | Seeing and seizing opportunity | 36.3 | 24.7 |
| Empathy | Adults thriving now and expecting to thrive | 52.6 | 57.9 |
| Enablement | Adults in steady, full-time jobs | 46.2 | 51.3 |
| Empowerment | Workers engaged at work | 3.4 | 37.9 |
The median represents the middle score among the 43 economies included in the HCE Index, not the OECD average or a comparison limited to France’s economic peers. Scores run from 0 to 100. A score of 100 marks the highest value among the 43 economies and 0 the lowest, so each score shows where France stands relative to the others. They are not percentages. You can find scores for every economy on the HCE Index dashboard.
Behind those scores are plain facts. Only 37 percent of French adults are thriving, a Gallup measure that requires both a good life today and strong hopes for the next five years. Only 33 percent of adults aged 15 and older work full time for an employer, a base that includes students and retirees. And only 8 percent of French employees are engaged at work. The index uses Gallup’s flourishing data for 2022 to 2024. Gallup’s 2026 workplace report, based on 2025 data, shows the same 8 percent for France, against 12 percent across Europe and 20 percent globally.
France presents a paradox. It has the capacity to innovate, the willingness to take entrepreneurial risks, and people prepared to act on opportunity. Yet these strengths coexist with much weaker measures of human flourishing. This is not a contradiction in the data. It is precisely what the HCE Index was designed to reveal. Neither GDP nor entrepreneurship data shows that gap on its own. It appears only when the two are read together.
In short, France is acting, but it is not flourishing. A country can be entrepreneurial without making life and work there equally rewarding. For researchers, the question is no longer only how much economic activity a country creates. It is whether that activity creates human value.
Why the young feel it first
The HCE Index does not directly measure students’ experiences. But students are not protesting about the present alone. They are looking ahead at the adult world they are being prepared to enter.
In the index, that world is one where fewer than four in ten adults are thriving. It is one where a third of adults work full time for an employer. And it is one where very few employees are engaged in their work. Teachers and childcare workers, who have joined the students, are part of that same workforce.
Young people often see the distance between what a country produces and what it promises them before anyone else names it. A request for more teachers is also a question about the future. Will the education we receive lead to a life worth wanting? The flourishing side of the index asks the same question of the whole population.
The HCE Index cannot say why these students marched, and it is not a judgment on France. Many countries share parts of this profile. The index can show that these conditions existed before anyone took to the streets, and that they raise a broader question: what happens when a country’s economic dynamism is not matched by the conditions that let its people flourish?
ICSB’s role: from research to policy
The International Council for Small Business has spent more than seventy years connecting entrepreneurship research with the people who make policy. That work helped establish United Nations MSMEs Day in 2017, which recognizes micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. The HCE Index, launched at the United Nations in June, continues it.
This article marks a first. It is the first time ICSB has used the HCE Index to read a moment as it unfolds, rather than to report a ranking after the fact. That is how we intend to use the index going forward.
ICSB will publish the index every year as new data arrive. Between editions, we will use it to explain events like these, give policymakers evidence, and keep human flourishing in the same conversation as economic growth.
Our research will focus on three areas. The first is the conditions of education and work, where flourishing is built or lost. The second is measurement, with wellbeing and opportunity tracked alongside entrepreneurship. The third is evaluation: whether economic policy produces better lives as well as more commercial activity.
Beyond France
For eighty years, nations have judged themselves mainly by output. Output matters. But a country can grow, innovate, and start new businesses while its people lose confidence that tomorrow will be better than today.
The Human-Centered Entrepreneurship framework rests on a simple idea. Entrepreneurship serves people when it grows alongside empathy, enablement, and empowerment. Without them, a society can look healthy on paper and still feel unwell to those living in it.
Paris students are not asking for a new index. They are asking for better schools and a future worth believing in. The responsibility of researchers is to ensure that what matters to people is also what we measure.
Ayman ElTarabishy is president and chief executive of the International Council for Small Business, which publishes the HCE Index, and a professor at George Washington University.
Sources
- ElTarabishy, A. (2026). The Human-Centered Entrepreneurship Index 2026 [Dashboard]. International Council for Small Business. France profile and dataset medians.
- ElTarabishy, A. (2026). The Human-Centered Entrepreneurship Index (HCE Index) measuring human flourishing and entrepreneurial dynamism. Journal of the International Council for Small Business.
- Gallup (2026). State of the Global Workplace: France country-level data.
- France 24, Manifestations, cours suspendus, Parcoursup “corrigé”… Le point sur la mobilisation lycéenne, October 6, 2026.
- Le Monde, High school students’ movement: Protests grow and draw widespread support, October 7, 2026.
- Sortiraparis, Student demonstrations on October 6 and Strike and protests on October 8, 2026.
- Sortiraparis, October 13 strike.
- Euronews, Fresh day of student protests across France, October 8, 2026.