This has rarely been more urgent.
The growth in human prosperity that we took for granted for so long is now at risk because many have forsaken the principles on which it was built. However, with the right values and choices, prosperity can be renewed.
We renew prosperity by renewing the principles that built it.
Our work at home will demonstrate how prosperity can be renewed elsewhere.
By conducting world-class research and convening leading minds, we seek to understand the ways that have worked in the past, applying ancient wisdom to modern challenges, translating sound principles into better institutions and policies. We will also educate the courageous and values-led leaders of tomorrow by reviving the philosophies and teachings which underpin prosperity.
This requires more than picking the right policies or changing institutions.
First, it requires the right values, which lead to the ideas, behaviours and cultures which create prosperity. This is how individuals, families and nations can be renewed.
This creates a free and prosperous nation, made up of free and responsible people, with no need for an overbearing state. When the values that underpin societies erode, so too does the foundation upon which nations stand.
Philosophers and activists of the past, from John Fortescue to Edmund Burke, succeeded by understanding and renewing their own inheritance of culture and constitution, and we replenish prosperity by doing the same in our time.
“…Good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created. This is especially true of the good things that come to us as collective assets: peace, freedom, law, civility, public spirit, the security of property and family life, in all of which we depend on the cooperation of others while having no means singlehandedly to obtain it.”
Sir Roger Scruton
Legatum first began establishing metrics around prosperity in 2006 when it engaged a team of Oxford University academics.
Together, they sought to define the pillars that would allow them to understand the overall quality of life for a nation’s people, using an evidence-based approach. The report produced from this work was the foundation upon which the Prosperity Index was established.
In 2007, Legatum founded the Institute with an initial remit to specifically focus on authorship of the Index.
In subsequent years, the Institute extended its programmes into other areas such as Russian disinformation, refugee flows, international development and the health of society.
Today, the Institute exists to promote the prosperity of individuals, families, and nations.
The Prosperity Institute was known as the Legatum Institute from 2007 to 2024. In 2023, the charitable organisation, Legatum Institute Foundation, was succeeded by Legatum Institute, a private company that is 100% funded by Legatum, a global investment and philanthropic firm with the mission of improving people’s lives by increasing prosperity across the world. Now named Prosperity Institute, the think tank exists to protect the principles that advance national prosperity.
