The 2024 Barometer assesses the extent to which countries’ economic models create value not only for the current, but particularly for young and future generations. While Scandinavian countries top the list, the United States and China fall behind.

The NextGen Value Creation Barometer 2024 examines global trends in intergenerational fairness, focusing on how economies and dominant business models in various countries either create or extract value from younger generations. The Barometer, now in its third year, is a collaborative effort between the St. Gallen Symposium, the Foundation for Value Creation, and the Board Foundation, and a sub-index of the Elite Quality Index (EQx). It assesses five key categories to determine a country’s commitment to fostering a sustainable future for the next generation.

The most critical category is Ecology and Natural Capital, accounting for 30% of the assessment. This category evaluates the extent to which business models deplete or conserve natural resources and ecosystems. Indicators like CO2 emissions and municipal waste recycling rate play a significant role here. The remaining categories—Equitable Opportunities, Education and Human Capital, Health and Well-Being, and Innovation and Technology—are equally weighted at 17.5%.

The findings from this year’s Barometer once again underscore the importance of focusing on the most long-term dimensions of Value Creation and extraction, the conceptual foundation of the EQx, with several noteworthy findings.

Denmark tops the 2024 Barometer rankings, performing exceptionally well in Equitable Opportunities and Education. This achievement reflects Denmark’s substantial public investment in social welfare and innovation, alongside its robust commitment to environmental sustainability.

Compared to 2023, the performance of China has fallen significantly (from #54 to #73). This is mainly due to a strong drop in its ranking in the Equitable Opportunities category, which can be explained by increased social inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient), rising government debt and a stark increase in the Youth unemployment rate. The United States has also fallen in the 2024 Barometer (from #76 to #79) and remains behind China.

The relatively poor performance of China and the US contrasts with the gains made in two other important economies. Noteworthy improvements have been in South Korea (rising from #17 to #13), in part due to the advances made in the category of Innovation and Technology and evidenced by increased labor productivity growth and higher investment in research & development. Also, the East Asian nation (which ranks #6 in the overall EQx) has increased Public spending on education, explaining its top performance in the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which saw several European countries fall significantly behind. For now, South Korea is even ahead of Japan (#14), despite the latter’s improvement (up from #19 last year).

Both countries exemplify the only path forward for aging societies: to leave a strong legacy for the next generation. This has all the more merit in societies where pensioners represent the main voting block and elite business models are still often run by literal golden agers.

In its concern for long-term Value Creation for young and future generations, the Barometer is a key impact project of the initiative for ‘A New Generational Contract’, which the St. Gallen Symposium launched together with the Club of Rome in May 2022. Over the coming years, and through cross-generational dialogues, advocacy in global policy and business fora, and other tangible projects, such as the Barometer, the initiative fosters intergenerational learning and leadership to drive more long-term, regenerative business models.

Read and Download the Full NextGen Value Creation Barometer 2024 here (external link to SSRN).