Explore the 2026 Index
Forty-three economies measured across two pillars (Human Flourishing and Entrepreneurship) and six constituent dimensions. Click any country for a full profile. Use the search and filters to narrow the view; click any column header to sort.
| Tier | Country | Region | Pop (M) | HF | Ent | HCE | NecessityENT |
|---|
What each column reports
- Tier
- Population grouping. Large (L): 50 million or more. Mid-size (M): 10 to 50 million. Small (S): under 10 million. Tier assignment is presentation logic only and does not affect scoring.
- Country
- Country name. Click any row to open the full country profile.
- Region
- Geographic grouping. The 2026 application uses six aggregated regions: North America, South America, Northern/Western Europe, Southern/Eastern Europe, East Asia, and South and Central Asia. Three additional subregions (Central America, Middle East, Africa) hold the seven economies excluded from regional aggregates due to small subregional samples.
- Pop (M)
- Population in millions. Source: UN Population Division 2024 estimates. Used for tier assignment and population-weighted regional averages; does not enter the country-level composite score.
- HF
- Human Flourishing pillar score, 0 to 100. Equal-weighted average of three constituent dimensions: Empathy (lived thriving via the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale), Enablement (real jobs: share employed at least 30 hours per week by an employer), and Empowerment (workplace ambition via Gallup's Q¹² engagement instrument). Source: Gallup Economics 2025 Annual Report, three-year aggregates 2022–2024.
- Ent
- Entrepreneurship pillar score, 0 to 100. Equal-weighted average of three constituent dimensions: Innovation (novel-product entrepreneurial activity), Risk-Taking (action under uncertainty), and Pro-Activeness (forward opportunity-seeking). Each dimension is opportunity-weighted before normalization, distinguishing opportunity-driven from necessity-driven activity at the variable level. Source: GEM 2022/2023 Global Report, Adult Population Survey.
- HCE
- Human-Centered Entrepreneurship composite score, 0 to 100. Equal-weighted average of the HF and Ent pillar scores. The composite expresses the framework's central claim that human flourishing and opportunity-driven entrepreneurial dynamism are jointly constitutive of human-centered entrepreneurship at the population level.
- NecessityENT
- Share of new entrepreneurs in the country reporting they started their business "to earn a living because jobs are scarce." Reported as a raw percentage from GEM motivation data, not a normalized score. Sort by this column to see the cross-national gradient: necessity shares range from roughly 25% in economies with mature formal-employment systems to nearly 90% where formal employment is constrained. The framework's opportunity-weighting on the Entrepreneurship pillar uses the inverse of this share. Source: GEM 2022/2023 Global Report.
Regional patterns
What this view shows
The 2026 HCE-Index reports population-weighted regional averages on the Human Flourishing pillar, the Entrepreneurship pillar, and the combined composite. Country-level scores are aggregated into six regional groupings: North America, Northern/Western Europe, Southern/Eastern Europe, East Asia, South and Central Asia, and South America. The grouping covers 36 of the 43 economies; the remaining 7 (Egypt, South Africa, Morocco, Israel, Guatemala, Tunisia, Panama) belong to subregions (North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Central America) that contain too few cases for stable regional aggregation in this 2026 baseline. Their country profiles remain available in Explore.
Why regional aggregation matters
Single-country comparison reveals individual outliers but can miss the structural patterns the framework is designed to surface. Aggregating to the regional level shows which regions have the rare combination of high flourishing and high entrepreneurial dynamism, which are strong on one pillar but constrained on the other, and which are constrained across the board.
How to read this page
Regions are ranked by HCE composite from highest to lowest. Each region carries a diagnostic signature — Balanced, Comfortable but less dynamic, High-energy but constrained, Structured but less empowered, Necessity-driven, or Constrained on multiple dimensions. Click any region card to expand it and see the constituent countries with their individual scores. Read together, the regional view surfaces the framework's central diagnostic finding: regions fall short differently.
All regions, ranked
Read together, the regional pattern reveals a deeper finding in the 2026 cycle: regions fall short differently. Northern and Western Europe show high flourishing combined with lower scores on the entrepreneurial-action dimension. East Asia shows lower scores on the ambition dimension alongside strong formal systems. South America shows higher scores on engagement and entrepreneurial action with lower scores on formal enablement. South and Central Asia show lower flourishing scores combined with largely necessity-driven entrepreneurship. North America combines both pillars at higher levels in the rare balanced configuration. The achievement of human flourishing combined with opportunity-driven entrepreneurial dynamism at meaningful scale is rare in the cross-national data, and the framework reports this rarity as a substantive finding rather than as an artifact of measurement.
Compare regions
What this view does
This view compares the population-weighted averages of two to four regional groupings side by side, on the two pillars and on each of the six constituent measures. Use it to see where regions converge and where they diverge — for example, North America's lead on workplace ambition compared with East Asia's, or South America's pro-activeness alongside Northern/Western Europe's.
How to read it
Each region appears as a colored card with its HCE composite score and the underlying pillar averages. The bars below visualize each region's position on every measure in the framework. The auto-generated reading at the top names the largest divergence and the largest convergence across the regions you select.
About the HCE-Index
The Human-Centered Entrepreneurship Index (HCE-Index) is the first global framework that integrates the measurement of human flourishing with the measurement of entrepreneurial dynamism. The 2026 application brings together two cycle-based source instruments — the Gallup Economics 2025 Annual Report (Gallup, Inc.) for the Human Flourishing pillar, and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2022/2023 Global Report: Adapting to a "New Normal" (Global Entrepreneurship Research Association, London Business School) for the Entrepreneurship pillar — through a single composite measure applied to 43 economies.
Reading the scores
All scores in the index are normalized 0–100 within the 43-country sample. A score of 100 represents the highest value observed in the dataset on that measure; 0 represents the lowest. A country's score therefore reflects its position relative to the other 42 economies in the index, not an absolute measurement.
The two pillars
The HCE composite (0–100) is the equal-weighted average of two pillars, each measured through three constituent variables:
- Human Flourishing pillar: Empathy (lived thriving), Enablement (real jobs), Empowerment (workplace agency)
- Entrepreneurship pillar: Innovation (novel products), Risk-Taking (action under uncertainty), Pro-Activeness (forward opportunity-seeking)
The Three E's of Human Flourishing
The Human Flourishing pillar is built on the Three E's, the conceptual core of Kim, ElTarabishy and Bae's (2018) Human-Centered Entrepreneurship framework. Each dimension names a different aspect of how a population experiences working life.
Empathy refers to the lived experience of thriving in one's own life. The framework treats human-centered entrepreneurship as something that can be sustained only by populations whose members are able to imagine themselves into a flourishing future. Populations that report widespread difficulty rating their lives positively cannot generate the agency that opportunity-driven entrepreneurial activity requires.
Enablement refers to the existence of real, formal employment at the population scale. The framework treats employment in formal, payroll-based work as the foundational structural condition that makes opportunity-driven entrepreneurship possible: where formal employment is absent at scale, entrepreneurial activity is overwhelmingly necessity-driven.
Empowerment refers to workplace agency and the sense that one's work is taken seriously by employers and colleagues. The framework treats workplace engagement as the population-scale signal that working life is constructed in ways that allow individuals to exercise initiative.
Together, the Three E's express the framework's normative position that human-centered entrepreneurship requires populations that are flourishing, employed, and empowered, not merely active.
The EO Triad of Entrepreneurial Dynamism
The Entrepreneurship pillar is built on the entrepreneurial orientation triad, drawing on Miller (1983) and Lumpkin and Dess (1996), and applied at the population level using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's Adult Population Survey.
Innovation refers to entrepreneurial activity that introduces products or services new to the country or to the world, rather than replicating existing offerings. The framework treats novelty as a marker of genuine entrepreneurial dynamism rather than commercial replication.
Risk-Taking refers to willingness to act on entrepreneurial opportunity under conditions of uncertainty. The framework operationalizes this through early-stage entrepreneurial activity weighted by the inverse of fear-of-failure, and further weighted by opportunity composition.
Pro-Activeness refers to the disposition to identify and act on opportunities ahead of others, rather than reactively. The framework operationalizes this through the combination of perceived opportunity, self-assessed entrepreneurial capability, and early-stage entrepreneurial activity, weighted by opportunity composition.
The EO triad measures dynamism at the population level rather than at the firm level. The framework's opportunity-weighting throughout the EO triad surfaces opportunity-driven dynamism as distinct from necessity-driven activity volume.
Regional groupings
The dataset is organized into six aggregated regions plus three small subregions held aside from regional aggregation. The regional grouping logic follows United Nations regional classification, with one practical adjustment: European economies are split into Northern/Western and Southern/Eastern Europe along the OECD-EU geographic convention used in the GEM reports, since the framework draws on GEM source data. The six aggregated regions cover 36 of the 43 economies. The remaining 7 economies belong to subregions that contain too few cases for stable regional aggregation in this 2026 baseline; their country profiles remain available in Explore but they do not contribute to a regional aggregate.
Country membership in the 2026 application is as follows. The six aggregated regions: North America (3 economies): United States, Canada, Mexico. South America (5): Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela. Northern/Western Europe (9): Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland. Southern/Eastern Europe (12): Latvia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Romania, Cyprus, Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, Serbia, Poland, Greece, Spain. East Asia (4): South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, China. South and Central Asia (3): India, Indonesia, Iran. The seven economies held aside from regional aggregation: Central America: Panama, Guatemala. Middle East: Israel, Egypt. Africa: South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia.
Sample sizes vary across the six aggregated regions in the 2026 application. South and Central Asia has three member economies; the other five aggregated regions have four or more. Where sample sizes are small, the framework directs interpretive weight to the underlying country profiles, and aggregate scores should be read alongside the country distributions. The seven economies held aside from regional aggregation (Panama, Guatemala, Israel, Egypt, South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia) are best read at the country level only.
The regional groupings are an aggregation choice for analysis, not a framework claim about regional identity or boundaries. Researchers using the framework's data are free to construct alternative groupings (income tiers, OECD membership, religious-cultural affinity, geographic adjacency) and recompute regional aggregates accordingly; the framework's country-level data supports any alternative aggregation.
Survey instruments and items
The two pillars are constructed from items in their respective source instruments. The full item set used in this 2026 application is reproduced below; verbatim wording is given for items in the public domain or published openly by the source organization, while Gallup's proprietary Q¹² instrument is described thematically with a citation pointing readers to the original source. Readers looking for short-label definitions of the column abbreviations used across the dashboard (HF, Ent, HCE, NecessityENT) can find a column-by-column legend at the bottom of the Explore Countries view.
Human Flourishing pillar — Gallup Economics 2025 (Gallup World Poll)
Gross Domestic Thriving — Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale
Two-part question (Cantril, 1965; administered by Gallup World Poll):
- "Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you, and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?" (0–10)
- "Just your best guess, on which step do you think you will stand in the future, say about five years from now?" (0–10)
Classification: a respondent is "thriving" if current life rating is seven or higher AND future life rating is eight or higher.
Gross Domestic Real Jobs — Gallup Employment Status series
Asked of all adult respondents in the Gallup World Poll:
- "Thinking about your work situation over the past seven days, have you been employed by an employer — even minimally like for an hour or more — from whom you receive money or goods? (This could be for one or more employer.)"
- "In a typical week (seven days), how many hours do you work for an employer? (This could be for one or more employers.)"
- "Again, thinking about the last seven days, were you self-employed, even minimally like for an hour or more? This means working for yourself, freelancing or doing contract work, or working for your own or your family's business."
- "In a typical week (seven days), how many hours do you work as a self-employed individual?"
- "Do you want to work 30 hours or more per week?"
- "In the past four weeks, have you been actively looking for employment?"
- "Would you have been able to begin work had you been offered a job within the last four weeks?"
Classification: a respondent is "employed full-time for an employer" if they are employed by an employer AND work at least 30 hours per week for that employer. Gross Domestic Real Jobs reports this share of the adult population (aged 15 and older).
Gross Domestic Ambition — Gallup Q¹² engagement instrument
Gross Domestic Ambition is computed from Gallup's twelve-item Q¹² employee engagement instrument. The Q¹² items are Gallup proprietary information protected by law and cannot be reproduced here without Gallup's written consent. The instrument measures twelve dimensions of workplace engagement, broadly covering: clarity of role expectations; access to materials and equipment; opportunity to do best work; recognition for good work; feeling cared for as a person; encouragement of development; voice and the sense that one's opinions count; sense of purpose in the work; commitment to quality among co-workers; presence of a workplace friendship; conversations about progress; and opportunities to learn and grow. Source for the full twelve-item set: Gallup, Inc. (2025), Gallup Economics 2025 Annual Report, Appendix Three.
Entrepreneurship pillar — GEM 2022/2023 Adult Population Survey (APS)
Total early-stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA)
The percentage of adults aged 18–64 who are starting or running a new business, combining nascent entrepreneurs (in the process of starting a business in the past 12 months, where wages have not yet been paid for three months or more) and new business owners (running a business that has paid wages for between three and 42 months).
Adult Population Survey items used in this application
- Perceived opportunity: "In the next six months, there will be good opportunities to start a business in my area." (% adults somewhat or strongly agree)
- Perceived capability: "I have the knowledge, skills and experience to start my own business." (% adults agree)
- Fear of failure: "You would not start a business for fear it might fail." (% of those who agree there are good opportunities locally and would be deterred by fear of failure)
- Necessity motivation: "To earn a living because jobs are scarce." (% of those starting or running a new business who somewhat or strongly agree this is a motivation for starting their business)
- Novelty: Whether the new business introduces products or services that are new to the area, new to the country, or new to the world; combined with whether there are many, few, or no other businesses offering the same products or services to potential customers.
GEM also asks three additional motivation items of those starting or running a new business: "To make a difference in the world"; "To build great wealth or very high income"; and "To continue a family tradition." These are reported in the source data and are available for future extensions of the Entrepreneurship-pillar weighting.
Population tiers
Countries are ranked within three tiers for fair cross-tier comparison: Large (≥50 million), Mid-size (10–50 million), and Small (<10 million).
Methodology and replicability
The framework is fully replicable from publicly available source data. The HCE-Index requires only ten country-level inputs from two source instruments. No proprietary adjustments or imputations are applied beyond the documented opportunity-weighting on the Entrepreneurship pillar variables. The full methodology is specified in the academic paper introducing the framework, prepared for submission to the Journal of the International Council for Small Business (JICSB).
Methodology floor
The framework reports a single composite floor at HCE ≤ 20. At very low composite values, the min-max normalization across two independent survey instruments compounds floor effects in both source datasets, producing point estimates at this lower bound that carry diminished diagnostic value relative to the disaggregated readings. For countries at or below this threshold, the dashboard reports the floor tag and directs interpretive weight to the underlying pillar values and the six constituent measures, which remain fully visible in the country profile, the dataset table, and the CSV export. The underlying point estimate is preserved in source data for replicability.
Limitations
The 2026 HCE-Index is a cross-sectional baseline produced from the most recent available source-data cycles (Gallup Economics 2025; GEM 2022/2023). Five limitations bear directly on interpretation. First, the index is observational rather than causal: country-level patterns describe co-occurrence of flourishing and entrepreneurial dynamism, not the mechanisms that produce them. Second, the 43-economy sample reflects GEM cycle participation; coverage is uneven across regions, and the seven economies held aside from regional aggregation reduce the statistical stability of the small-subregion readings. Third, the framework's opportunity-weighting is an analytical choice that distinguishes the HCE-Index from headline activity-rate frameworks; alternative weightings would produce different country positions. Fourth, the methodology floor (HCE ≤ 20) reflects normalization behavior near the lower bound of the source-data scales and should not be over-interpreted. Fifth, longitudinal validation will require multiple cycles, which the framework establishes as the baseline year. The companion paper provides full discussion.
Annual production
The HCE-Index is designed for annual production. As Gallup and GEM publish new data cycles, the same methodology is re-run to produce updated country scores. ICSB publishes the Index annually as the institutional steward of the framework.
Companion paper
The HCE-Index framework, methodology, and validity treatment are documented in full in the companion academic paper (ElTarabishy, 2026), prepared for submission to the Journal of the International Council for Small Business. The paper presents the conceptual foundations (the capability tradition in human development from Sen, 1999 and Nussbaum, 2011; the entrepreneurial orientation literature from Miller, 1983 and Covin & Slevin, 1989; the individual-opportunity nexus from Shane & Venkataraman, 2000), the construct definitions, the population-weighted normalization procedure, the regional aggregation rationale and coverage gap, and a full Limitations and Future Directions section. The dashboard summarizes the framework and presents the data; the paper provides the analytical foundation that the dashboard draws on.
Citation
Suggested citation for the dashboard:
ElTarabishy, A. (2026). The Human-Centered Entrepreneurship Index 2026 [Dashboard]. International Council for Small Business. https://icsb.org/hce-index
For the underlying framework:
ElTarabishy, A. (2026). The Human-Centered Entrepreneurship Index (HCE-Index): Measuring Human Flourishing and Entrepreneurial Dynamism. Journal of the International Council for Small Business [forthcoming].
About ICSB
The International Council for Small Business (ICSB) is the founding institutional home of the Human-Centered Entrepreneurship research domain, articulated formally in Kim, ElTarabishy, and Bae (2018) and developed across more than a decade of ICSB-affiliated scholarship. The HCE-Index is the operational instrument of that scholarship.
About the author
The HCE Index was developed by Ayman ElTarabishy, President and CEO of the International Council for Small Business and a faculty leader at the George Washington University School of Business. He co-founded United Nations MSMEs Day (June 27), established by UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/71/279 in 2017, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Small Business Management (JSBM). He is also an award-winning educator at the GW School of Business, most recently receiving the Outstanding Accelerated Master of Business Administration Teaching Award and the Outstanding Master of Science in Management Teaching Award.
His scholarship on entrepreneurship and human-centered economic development includes more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and books. His forthcoming book on Human-Centered Entrepreneurship introduces the Three E's framework (Empathy, Enablement, and Empowerment), which provides the conceptual foundation for the Human Flourishing pillar of the index.