World Cup: The Social Progress Guide

Buckle up! This is your social progress guide to the 2026 World Cup! 

In this episode, we take you on a journey starting with a quick-fire quiz on our 2026 host nations: Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

Michael Green also tackles the big questions:

• Can winning the World Cup give you a social progress boost? 
• Can social progress help you win the World Cup? 
•  Does an uptick in social progress boost the country's chances of winning the World Cup? 
• Is there a true "social progress dividend" for hosting the tournament? We analyze historical data on host nations from 2002 through 2026.

Plus, our biggest reveal yet! We are officially launching the World Cup Social Progress Tournament, a new interactive tool that lets you assess the quality of life and societal well-being in every competing country. Play along now at: socialprogress.org/worldcup

We also use our new interactive tool to analyze one marquee match from every single group! Tune in to find out who the data picks to win:

• Group A: Mexico vs. South Africa
• Group B: Canada vs. Qatar
• Group C: Brazil vs. Morocco
• Group D: United States vs. Australia
• Group E: Côte d'Ivoire vs. Ecuador
• Group F: Netherlands vs. Japan
• Group G: Egypt vs. Iran
• Group H: Saudi Arabia vs. Spain
• Group I: Norway vs. France
• Group J: Argentina vs. Austria
• Group K: Colombia vs. Uzbekistan
• Group L: England vs. Croatia

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

It's almost upon us, a month long festival of the beautiful game, or as my mother used to call it, hell on earth. Yes, soccer me no soccer, it's the football world cup. Forty eight countries vying for glory to be the best team in the world to be decided in the final on the nineteenth of July. The World Cup encompasses so much more than what goes on on the pitch. Think of the soccer war of 1969 between El Salvador and Honduras, sparked by a World Cup qualifier. Or think of England's defeat in a 1970 World Cup quarterfinal when they'd come with such high expectations as the holders, only to drop out in the quarterfinal against Germany. It punctured a bubble of optimism in the country and led to the Prime Minister Harold Wilson losing a general election and losing power. Football is life, life is football. So how does social progress affect the World Cup and vice versa? In a special edition of the Beyond GDP podcast, here is the Social Progress Guide to the World Cup. Welcome to the Social Progress Guide to the World Cup. And part one is a quiz. A quiz about our host nations, Mexico, Canada, and the United States. No prizes for knowing that this is the first time that a whole continent has hosted the World Cup. So, a nice easy question to kick off with. Which of the three host countries, Mexico, Canada, United States, has the highest social progress? If you answered the United States, you would be wrong. Mexico does have the lowest uh ranking of the three countries, 75th in the world, but the US only stumbles in at 32nd on the Social Progress Index. And it's Canada that tops the polls, coming in 22nd in the 2026 Social Progress Index. Now that was nice and easy. Let's get on to something a little bit harder. Question two. We know which of the host countries is leading on social progress, but which one is on the attack? Which of our host countries, Mexico, Canada, United States, has shown the biggest improvement in social progress since the last World Cup in 2022. If you chose Mexico, you would be right. Mexico has gained about a point on the Social Progress Index since 2022 and is the only one of the host countries to have actually improved. With millions of fans coming from all around the world to attend the World Cup, safety is of course a major issue. Which of the host countries, Mexico, Canada and the United States, is the safest? Did you guess it? Did you guess Canada? If so, you're right. Canada has the highest safety score on the Social Progress Index of the three host nations. But don't cheer too soon, Canada. You actually only rank 62nd in the world on safety, which is pretty risky, and your score is slipping. The US ranks 99th and Mexico 128th. So, traveling fans, you be careful out there. Question number four. Connectivity is a critical issue for traveling fans, so they can send their Insta and TikTok videos sparkling around the world. Which of our three host countries has the best information and communications? And the answer is the United States Bayern knows, largely because Canada has a surprisingly low number of mobile phone connections. That's just weird. Question five. The World Cup is meant to be fun. So which of the host countries is the happiest and most fun-loving? Well, going by the 2026 World Happiness Report, the answer is Mexico, which came in twelfth place in the world. And should we be surprised? This is the country that invented the Mexican wave, which fans do when the game gets a bit boring, they all have a bit of fun jumping up and down in a stadium. So fun loving Mexico wins, runner up in the happiness race is the United States, and it's bronze and last place for Canada, the 25th happiest country in the world. Did you get them all right? If so, congratulations, no cups, no trophies, I'm afraid, but just the glory of knowing that you know your social progress data well. Can winning the World Cup give you a social progress boost? Or vice versa, can social progress help you win the World Cup? Now at first glance that does seem a bit crazy. If the former were true, Brazil, which has lifted the trophy more times than anyone else, would be a world leader in social progress, which it isn't, not quite yet anyway. And if the latter were true, the Nordic countries that monotonously top the Social Progress Index rankings would have a vice-like grip on the World Cup, which they don't. But if we think about it in a slightly more subtle way, does winning the World Cup change a country's social progress trajectory? Or maybe a country's social progress trajectory influences whether they win the World Cup or not. We can test this hypothesis by looking at winning countries' social progress scores before and after claiming the trophy. To do this, we're going to look at the the winning countries this century, which means Brazil in 2002, Italy in 2006, Spain in 2010, Germany in 2014, France in 2018, and Argentina in 2022. What we find in general is that winning the World Cup is actually not good for your social progress. After Italy won in 2006, its rate of improvement slowed by half. Pretty much the same thing happened to Spain after they won in 2010, and Argentina's victory in 2002 was followed by a sharp decline in social progress. Others like Brazil in 2002, Germany in 2014, and France in 2016 saw no real change in their social progress trajectory after taking the title. No country saw an improvement in their trajectory after lifting the trophy. So sadly, our first proposition is a wipeout. Winning the World Cup does not boost your social progress. But what about the other way around? Does an uptick in social progress boost a country's chances of winning the World Cup? And that might be important to know if you're betting on the outcome. Here we see one clear pattern, which is that no country has won the World Cup in this century with declining social progress in the four years before the tournament. If we follow that through, on that basis, don't put your money on the US or Canada to win the World Cup on home soil, since they're both declining on social progress. And even other countries that are footballing favourites have got real social progress issues, which may be a reason to avoid them in the betting. Argentina, the holders, France the favourites, as well as top-rated the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain are all on a downward social progress trend, which, if the pattern holds, means they're not going to be World Cup winners. What this means by a process of elimination is that our tips for the World Cup are Germany, Morocco, and England just. And if you're looking for an outside bet, the football analysts haven't really given Mexico much of a chance. But since they're on a social progress trend, they're in with a shout, might be worth a flutter. It's the 19th of July. The World Cup has been awarded and the teams have gone home. What's left behind in the host countries except lots of bills to pay and a big hangover? What is the World Cup's legacy? Hosting a World Cup is of course a big honour, but it's also very expensive. And the people who organize it tend to justify the costs because of the wider economic and social benefits that come from hosting the tournament. So can we find a social progress dividend from hosting the World Cup, a social progress legacy effect? So let's look at the countries that have hosted the World Cup since the turn of the millennium. So that's Japan and South Korea in 2002, Germany in 2006, South Africa in 2010, Brazil in 2014, Russia in 2018, and Qatar in 2022. And we're looking for two things. Do we see an acceleration in social progress before the World Cup as the host country invests in the preparation? Andor do we see a legacy effect boost to social progress afterwards? What the data show is actually that the big social progress gains precede hosting the World Cup. South Korea, Japan, Germany, and Russia all showed substantial gains in social progress in the run-up to hosting the World Cup, and then what followed was a slowdown. Brazil also followed this pattern, but with rather feeble gains in preparation for the World Cup and a sharp decline afterwards. The two host countries to buck this trend are first of all Qatar, which actually is the only country that lost social progress in the run-up to the tournament, although it did bounce back afterwards. But we shouldn't look at this case too much because it's a bit of an anomaly. Qatar's preparations for the World Cup were, of course, blighted by COVID, which was a negative shock to social progress in every country in the world. So I wouldn't read too much into the Qatar example. South Africa, however, shows a legacy impact equal to the improvement in social progress running up to the World Cup. So well done, South Africa. Nonetheless, it does seem that legacy effects of hosting the World Cup are relatively weak, even if there are some benefits in the preparation phase. This is of course bad news for our 2026 hosts who could all do with a social progress boost at the moment. The US and Canada are coming into this summer's tournament on the back of sliding social progress, and Mexico's gains have been relatively weak in recent years. But hey, this is the World Cup. Upsets happen. Who would have predicted Senegal to beat France in 2002? Or North Korea to beat Italy in 1960? Or even in perhaps the greatest upset of all, England to lose to the United States in 1950? That's the beauty of the World Cup. Anything can happen. Even a resurgence in social progress for our host countries. What do you do when you're trying to predict who will win a World Cup game? Do you look at the past form of those teams? Do you look at the individual players of the team? Who's got the strongest squad? Who's playing in the most powerful leagues? Well, here at Social Progress Imperative, we've got a different way for you to analyse the teams vying for the World Cup. We have built a tool that allows you to compare countries not based on their footballing skills, but on their social progress. Not just their total social progress scores, but we've even broken it down to scores on the 12 components. So for each of the World Cup games, you can look head to head at how the two teams compare across the 12 components of social progress and see who wins. Will it be 12-0? Could it be 7-5? Could it be 5-7? Or could we even see some six-all draws in this World Cup? So think beyond the football to the real things that matter to people and assess your teams based on social progress index data. And let's start with the inaugural game of the tournament in group A, Mexico against South Africa. So you've got two middleweight countries taking each other on. We've got South Africa, which is 91st place in the social progress, taking on Mexico in 75th place. And what we're going to do is we're going to look at the scores on each of the 12 components of the Social Progress Index. And what we find is that it's Mexico who are the winners, coming in, winning seven out of five components, with uh high scores in inclusivity, health, um, security, etc., compared to South Africa, which is stronger in basic education, information, and rights and freedoms. So a slight victory for Mexico against South Africa in the social progress stakes. Now, on to group B, and we have Brazil against highly favored on the footballing front, Morocco. But how do they stack up on social progress? Well, the Brazilian machine marches on and crushes Morocco by 10 components to two. Morocco does do slightly better on some aspects like safety and housing, but on every other aspect of social progress, it is a win for Brazil. And finally, in Group D, we are going to look at the United States taking on Australia. Two very affluent, very high quality of life countries, but it's a big victory for Australia. They take it by 11 components to one. The only aspects of social progress where the United States beats Australia is actually on housing, but a big victory for Australia. And here in Group E, we are looking at Côte d'Ivoire against Ecuador. And it's a big win for the Latin Americans. Ecuador is better on 10 out of the 12 components. Côte d'Ivoire securing wins in safety and also in rights and voice. So two component wins to Côte d'Ivoire, but 10 for Ecuador. And now into group F and we're going to look at the Netherlands against Japan. Two highly developed countries, two high social progress countries. And the winner is it's the Netherlands by 7-5. Japan does very well on things like housing and safety and basic education and health. But Netherlands just squeezes it on with good scores on nutrition and medical care, information communications, health and wellness, and inclusive society. Congratulations, Netherlands, in a hard-fought game. And now into group G, and we are going to look at Egypt versus Iran. So these are two sort of middle income, middling social progress countries, uh quite tightly matched, and it's very tightly matched. It is in fact our first draw. Egypt against Iran, six components each. Egypt wins out on water and sanitation, housing, safety, information communications, liberty and freedoms and inclusive society. But Iran wins out on nutrition and medical care, basic education, and several other components. So that's our first draw, and in the world of social progress, we don't have a way of going to penalties. Now, into group H, and we are going to look at Spain against Saudi Arabia. Now, Saudi Arabia is very, very rich, but not so great on social progress. And the Spanish actually romp home 10 to 2. That's right, Spain wins with 10 components over only two for Saudi Arabia in water and sanitation and in housing. That's where Saudi Arabia does best. We're going into group H and we're going to look at the match between Norway and France, two very highly developed European countries. How do they compare? Well, actually, it's Norway that smashed France 11 components to one. 11 out of the 12 components of the Social Progress Index, Norway beats France. It's only in housing that France manages to score higher than Norway. Then we're going to go into group J and we're going to look at Argentina taking on Austria. Latin America against Europe. Austria, of course, is quite a bit richer than Argentina. And the result is an absolute walkover from Austria. Austria win 12 to 0. Every single component of the Social Progress Index better than Argentina. It was a tough opponent, Argentina, being putting up against Austria, but Austria did the business and romped home. On to now to group K, and we're going to look at Colombia against Uzbekistan. That's a fuck match. Central Asia against Latin America. Again, both sort of middle-income countries, very different places. It's a bit of an unknown match, this one. And the winner is it's Colombia. Colombia come out by winning seven components to five. Uzbekistan does okay on nutrition and medical care and basic education. But Colombia in the end triumphs on water and sanitation, health, and inclusive society. And then to our final group, group L, and it's going to be England against Croatia. England have a habit of stumbling against opposition when they should be doing well. And in this matchup with Croatia, we do see England manage to hold it together and romp home by 10 components to two. Croatia managed to do a better score in housing and on safety, but on all the other aspects of social progress, it's England win this key Group L match. Thank you everyone for watching and listening today. And we'll be back again next week for another Beyond GDP, the Social Progress podcast. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

If you want to learn more about going beyond GDP, Social Progress Imperative has the tools to help you. Our flagship, Global Social Progress Index, covers 170 countries with data going back to 2011. Through 57 different indicators, the Global Social Progress Index gives you a rigorous and comprehensive assessment of how countries are performing on real quality of life. For information on all of these tools, go to our website at socialprogress.org.