The European Human Capital Index: the challenge of Central and Eastern Europe

In 2006, the Lisbon Council set out to define and measure human capital, seeking to quantify numerically the way human capital is developed over the course of a person's lifetime in different countries. Specifically, it looked at countries' ability to develop and nurture their human capital in four separate categories - human capital stock, human capital utilisation, human capital productivity and demographic outlook, assigning a score to each country in each category. Then, it brought those scores together to form a composite ranking, allowing human capital development strategies across countries and regions to be compared and contrasted. In this study the authors seek to deepen and extend the analysis - most notably by looking for the first time at the human-capital situation in Central and Eastern Europe. In particular, the study profiles 10 of the 12 new [European Union] EU member states plus Croatia and Turkey, assigning each country a human capital score based on the four criteria described above. For benchmarking purposes, it also includes the 'EU-14' (i.e. the weighted average of the 13 countries surveyed in 2006 plus Switzerland).

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