The Methodology.
How we turn failures of power into a single tidy number.
What the index is
The Cooked Index is a 0 to 100 number where 100 means "actively cooked." It blends nine metrics chosen so that wealth, power and policy failure drive the score, not poverty. A country full of billionaires where nobody can afford a house, going broke from a hospital visit, with bad air, jammed prisons, lopsided income distribution and a short life expectancy will score higher than a poor country doing its best.
The weights
- Housing cost burden13%
- Billionaires hoarded12%
- Air pollution (PM2.5)11%
- Political polarization11%
- Incarceration rate11%
- Catastrophic health spending11%
- Income inequality (Gini)11%
- Life expectancy (inverted)10%
- Homicide rate10%
Why housing and healthcare aren't ratios
We deliberately don't use price-to-income ratios for housing or out-of-pocket percentage for healthcare. Both metrics make rich countries look fine on paper and that doesn't match how anyone actually lives.
Housing cost burden — the share of households spending more than 30% of income on housing — measures pain, not price. A 4× price-to-income ratio means nothing if childcare, debt and groceries already ate the budget. About one in three US households is cost-burdened by this standard, which is the lived reality.
Catastrophic health spending — the share of the population whose out-of-pocket health costs exceed 10% of their household budget — is the WHO's own measure of medical bankruptcy risk. A "low" out-of-pocket percentage of a giant total can still wipe a family out. This metric captures that. Source: WHO/World Bank SDG indicator 3.8.2.
Income inequality — the Gini coefficient
The Gini coefficient measures how unequally income is distributed across a population on a 0 to 100 scale. 0 means everyone earns the same; 100 means one person earns everything.
Rough reference points:
- Below 30 — relatively equalmost of Western/Northern Europe
- 30 – 40 — moderate inequalityUK, Japan, Canada, Australia
- Above 40 — significant wealth gapUS, much of Latin America, parts of Africa
We pull values from the World Bank Gini Index (SI.POV.GINI), using the latest available year per country (most values 2018–2022). For a handful of countries where the World Bank has no recent estimate (some Gulf states, Cuba, Syria, Venezuela, Taiwan) we fall back to the CIA World Factbook entry. Higher numbers = more unequal = more cooked.
Sources
| Source | Metric | Vintage |
|---|---|---|
| IQAir World Air Quality Report | Air pollution (PM2.5) | 2025 |
| Forbes World's Billionaires | Billionaires hoarded | 2025 |
| V-Dem + Global Peace Index | Political polarization | 2025 |
| World Prison Brief | Incarceration rate | 2025 |
| OECD Affordable Housing Database (HC1.2) | Housing cost burden | 2024 |
| WHO / World Bank SDG 3.8.2 | Catastrophic health spending | 2024 |
| UN World Population Prospects / WHO | Life expectancy | 2024 |
| UNODC Intentional Homicide Statistics | Homicide rate | 2024 |
| World Bank — Gini Index (SI.POV.GINI) | Income inequality (Gini) | 2018–2022 |
Snapshot of publicly available 2024 and 2025 reports.
Coverage: why only 72 countries?
A country only makes the index if we have all nine metrics for it. Mixing complete and incomplete profiles would let countries game the rank by simply being missing data, which is the opposite of the point. 72 countries cleared that bar in this snapshot.
We'd rather rank fewer countries honestly than rank every country dishonestly. As we lock down more data, the list grows.
Missing your country? Scroll to the bottom of the home page and send us a note.
See what's actually being legislated
The index measures conditions. The Policy Watchlist shows the laws, rules, and regulations US, UK, and EU governments are passing right now — without the jargon.
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