Much-anticipated World Citizenship Report 2024 released by CS Global Partners

CS Global Partners released the much-anticipated 2024 edition of the World Citizenship Report under the theme- “Responsibility, Peace, Freedom.” The groundbreaking report surveyed the value of citizenship through the lens of the global-minded individual. The edition has ranked Ireland, Switzerland, and Denmark in the top three spots out of 188 countries.

The World Citizenship Report is the world’s first-ever endeavor, which aims to be a data-driven tool to understand the chaotic, often contradictory, and demanding responsibilities of global citizens. The data collected by WCR indicated the value of citizenship and what citizenships have to offer based on security, economics, mobility, and beyond.

In this year’s edition, the WCR sheds light on the significance of responsibility and stresses the electoral process, as 50 percent of the world’s population will be voting in an election this year. As per the report, the global citizens will vote not only with themselves in mind, but also with the wider world in mind.

The report highlighted that the world has been experiencing deep electoral change in the hands of global citizens due to the questions of migration, geopolitical instability, climate change, and warfare.

Download the World Citizenship Report 2024 here

Micha Rose Emmett, co-founder and CEO of CS Global Partners, also elaborated on the concept of responsibility and electoral change across the globe. She said,” Four billion souls will be voting in an election this year. That’s half the world’s population, exercising their rights. In this third edition of the World Citizenship Report (WCR), we declare, ‘with great electoral choice comes great responsibility.”

A first-of-its-kind report, the WCR goes beyond a simple ranking of passports to instead rank citizenship on the basis of five motivators: Safety and Security, Economic Opportunity, Quality of Life, Global Mobility, and Financial Freedom. Ambitious in scope and nuanced in its careful consideration of a multitude of factors influencing the value of citizenship, the WCR reflects the issues that global citizens care about most.

In the report, the focus has also been put on investment, political and economic analysis of the most coveted citizens, along with handy rankings of citizenships by each motivator. The WCR also delved into the strengths and weaknesses of each country and ranked them according to their value to a mass affluent population across the globe.

The rankings in this year’s report have also experienced some movement up and down as Ireland climbed up to the first spot in 2024, while Denmark slid down from first to third position. Switzerland maintained its dominance and secured the second position for a second consecutive year. The countries such as United Arab Emirates and New Zealand have also made it to the top 20 countries of the report.

Micha Emmett also lauded Ireland and the United Arab Emirates for their growth and said,” Our country rankings gleaned surprising and insightful results, too. On our Economic Opportunity pillar, for example, small economies like Ireland and the United Arab Emirates outstripped larger ones. This indicates that economic potential matters and that markers of economic strength such as robust global trade, low inflation, and GDP growth can distinguish smaller countries from the rest of the pack.”

Download the World Citizenship Report 2024 here

The WCR provides a data-intensive answer to many of the most common concerns of global citizens, such as evaluating which jurisdictions will grant their families the best quality of life or what countries afford the highest level of safety and security.

The World Citizenship Report 2024 also features a World Citizenship Index (WCI)- a comprehensive tool that employs multiple datasets indexing the aspects of citizenship most valuable to global citizens and ranks them by these parameters.

More robust than a simple ranking of passport strength, the WCI provides a multifaceted exploration of the value of citizenship, through the lens of the things that matter most to HNWls.

Key findings of the World Citizenship Report 2024 which are based on the following five key motivators:

Quality of Life: As per the report, global survey of HNWIs’ priorities indicated that ‘Quality of Life’ was the most important factor when considering citizenship for 36.9 percent of participants. Monaco, Denmark, and Hong Kong took the top spots for Quality of Life in 2024, reflecting the high standard of living and wealth these jurisdictions can extend to all their citizens.

The research also indicated that the issues that lend themselves to an improved quality of life matter more than ever to HNWIs.

Safety and Security: The report talked about the wars broke out in the Middle East and continued in Europe, highlighting that the safety and security continued to be an important factor for HNWIs. It highlighted that these wars, which are already becoming important electoral touchpoints in global elections, are present in HNWIs’ concerns around seeking safety and security amid global turmoil.

The survey of the report respondents overwhelmingly indicated that ‘rights under the law’ and ‘safety’ were the primary concerns. As per WCR, the top three countries for Safety and Security, according to the World Citizenship Index (WCI), are Iceland, Switzerland and Ireland.

As per the report, these countries are all known for having a robustly protected natural environment, and all sent representatives to COP-28 in 2023. These countries are also politically neutral, indicating that there is little chance of citizens being drafted to fight in foreign wars or being overly involved in geopolitical instability.

Download the report here

Economic Opportunity: Shedding light on the economic aspect, the report mentioned that compared to 2020-23 and 2023-24, 2024 looks to be a year defined by economic resilience, with some risk posed by impending electoral change.

Year-on-year, small economies stood out in the growth projections, as captured by the WCR Economic Opportunity motivator findings. Ireland, the top scorer in WCR Economic Opportunity findings, features a high GDP per capita and falling inflation rates.

Global Mobility: As per the report, freedom of travel for leisure/pleasure’ was the top consideration, which indicates that having time to explore and enjoy a country is important to HNWIs seeking a second citizenship. Moreover, this year the freedom to travel for ‘leisure/pleasure’ option was some 18 percentage points ahead of the previous leading aspect of safety/security’, again underlining its primacy.

This year, France secured the first position in the motivator.

Financial Freedom: This year’s WCR survey found that the ability to more effectively manage their investments, portfolio diversification, and wealth planning would be a prime motivator for second citizenship for 40.5 percent of respondents in relation to financial and business goals.

The World Citizenship Index’s (WCIs) Financial Freedom motivator has dispelled commonly held assumptions about Scandinavian countries for a second consecutive year. Like last year, Denmark takes the top spot as the most financially free state in the index. Finland, Norway, and Sweden all also feature in the top ten of the rankings, just as they did in 2023.

The World Citizenship Index has used a methodology which combines qualitative and quantitative research to make sense of the deep, enduring quality of citizenship through the lens of the HNWI investors.

After calculating a score out of 100 for each motivator, the report subsequently utilized a weighted average to combine each jurisdiction’s scores across the five motivators to rank all citizenships in a hierarchy from most to least powerful overall. The relative weights of each motivator were decided with input from the survey of over 500 HNWls from around the world.

Download the report here

The WCR studies the most important aspects of what makes citizenship valuable, and ultimately calls for a globally-minded conception of citizenship.