The first Social Progress Index (SPI) report was released in 2013; a handful of studies examined the determinants of social progress at country level as an instrument in evaluating nation’s prosperity. This study focuses on determining the relationship between institutional quality measured by the World Governance Index (WGI) and social progress measured (SPI).The results are based on the secondary data from 107 countries over a four year period (2014-2017), after controlling Gross Domestic Product per capita, innovativeness and trustworthiness. The result was in favor of the fixed effect model. The findings illustrate that institutional quality was consistently significant in fostering social progress. This study is unique in that, it is the first that examined the role of formal institutional quality in promoting social progress at country level by using SPI as a measurement of social progress.

This study sought to determine the effect of business regulation on social progress. The dependent variable, social progress, was measured in terms of social progress index of the sampled countries. On the other hand, the independent variable, business regulation, was measured in terms of business regulation score. Consequently, the study used secondary data from a sample of 248 countries over a period of five years (2014-2018). In order to determine the appropriate model for analysis, the study conducted the Hausman test where it was established that the random effect model was more appropriate as compared to the fixed effect model. Using the Stata computer program to run multiple regression analysis of the random effect model, the study findings indicated that business regulation has a positive and significant effect on social progress as given across all the six models that were estimated in this study. However, the overall effect of regulation, as given by the estimated regression coefficients under the respective models, kept varying with the introduction of an additional control variable. These findings were in accordance with the study expectations that business regulation significantly affects social progress. Further, the findings implied that, governments should devote additional resources towards addressing the social indicators of progress to meaningfully improve the living standards of residents, instead of solely focusing on economic and environmental factors. On the other hand, considering that the current study did not categorize countries according to their levels of development, it recommends for further research to determine the effect of business regulation on social progress in low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries to allow for comparison of findings from countries that are at different levels of development.