World Economics ESG Methodology

Updated: December 04, 2025


 

Environmental Index

The World Economics Environmental Impact Index focus of each country’s total carbon and methane emissions. Source data from Friedlingstein et al’s 2020 Global Carbon Atlas was obtained in an emissions volume per capita format. UN Population data was combined with emissions data to project total carbon and methane emissions per country. The resulting total Carbon and Methane data has been indexed on a scale of 0-100. The Indexes are then averaged to calculate a total Environmental Impact Index which focuses on each countries emissions.

The Emissions Index is based on a scale of 0-100 where 0 indicated very high emissions (very bad environmental impact) levels and 100 = very low emissions levels. All countries are ranked relative to each other to create global and regional rankings.

 

Life Quality Index

The World Economics Life Quality Index has weighted components covering Health, Education and Employment.

World Economics uses United Nations and World Bank data to create proxy indexes for Health, Education and Employment. These Indexes are indexed on a scale of 0-100 using  so that each country can be compared.

Components:

- Life expectancy
- Mean years of schooling
- Population living in poverty

The resulting Index is used to rank each country. A value at the lower end of the scale indicates poor social factors whilst a value towards 100 indicates good factors.