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The Global Wealth Mobility Framework assesses jurisdictions on the structural factors that determine their attractiveness to internationally mobile wealth. Each jurisdiction receives a Wealth Mobility Competitiveness Score from 0 to 100, supported by dimension-level scores that allow the headline result to be unpacked into the factors that drive it.
Each jurisdiction is assessed across 12 dimensions, weighted by their importance to internationally mobile high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) and families. The dimensions are listed below in descending order of weight.
Tax Treatment | 18% | New-arrival regimes, income, capital gains, wealth, inheritance, real estate, exit tax, and regime stability |
Rule of Law & Quality of Life | 16% | Institutional quality, safety, quality of life, education, and healthcare |
Investor & HNWI Programs | 13% | Existence, accessibility, and depth of investor and HNWI residence or citizenship programs |
Naturalization & Permanent Residence | 13% | Pathways to permanent residence and citizenship, including associated timelines, physical presence requirements, dual citizenship provisions, and citizenship by descent options |
Family Reunification | 10% | Ease and breadth of bringing dependents and family members in, including the associated financial requirements |
Geopolitical Stability | 9% | Macro-level political and institutional stability and country risk |
Remittance & Capital Mobility | 7% | Capital controls, remittance taxation, offshore wealth infrastructure, and tax treaty networks |
Processing Times | 5% | Speed and digital efficiency of residence and citizenship application processes |
Language & Integration | 5% | Language requirements at entry and for settlement, and integration testing for settlement or naturalization |
Climate Resilience | 2% | Climate adaptation capacity and long-term environmental resilience |
Merit & Talent | 1% | Merit-based and fast-track pathways for highly skilled individuals beyond standard investor and HNWI routes |
Digital Nomad | 1% | Dedicated digital nomad or remote-worker visa frameworks |
The dimensions reflect the structural factors internationally mobile wealth actually weighs when evaluating a jurisdiction — drawn from established practitioner experience, the policy and economic literature on HNWI mobility, and the resilience considerations that shape multi-generational positioning. Together they capture both immediate decision drivers (tax, the existence of residence and citizenship or other programs, family inclusion, capital mobility) and long-horizon factors (institutional quality, geopolitical stability, climate resilience) that determine whether a jurisdiction can serve as a durable base.
The weights reflect each dimension’s relative importance to mobile wealth. Tax Treatment and Rule of Law & Quality of Life lead because they are consistently the most decisive factors in relocation decisions. Investor & HNWI Programs and Naturalization & Permanent Residence follow because the legal pathway itself is often what makes a relocation possible. The lowest weights — Climate Resilience, Merit & Talent, Digital Nomad — capture factors that matter to specific cohorts but do not drive the headline picture for most globally mobile families. Weights reflect structural importance over the medium term rather than reactivity to any single recent policy event.
Each jurisdiction is scored from -3 to +3 on every dimension, where +3 represents the strongest possible position for internationally mobile wealth and -3 the weakest. Every score is anchored to authoritative, publicly available data drawn from government policy documents as well as leading international institutions and specialist datasets, including the IMF, OECD, World Bank, Global Peace Index, and other globally recognized sources, so the rationale for each score is auditable.
Weighted dimension scores are then summed to a raw total, which is linearly rescaled to a 0 to 100 Wealth Mobility Competitiveness Score for ease of communication. The rescale preserves the analytical ordering exactly — it only changes the presentation. A score of 50 represents a neutral overall position; scores above 70 indicate strong overall positioning for internationally mobile wealth; scores below 50 indicate weaker structural positioning.
Each jurisdiction receives a Wealth Mobility Competitiveness Score reflecting its overall structural attractiveness and competitiveness for globally mobile wealth. The score is not measuring economic success. It is measuring factors influencing wealth mobility behavior.
The score is derived from a weighted assessment of factors including investor access, policy competitiveness, institutional quality, geopolitical resilience, capital mobility, quality of life, and international optionality.
Scores are normalized to a 100-point scale to facilitate comparison across jurisdictions, with higher scores indicating stronger positioning for attracting, retaining, and supporting internationally mobile individuals, families, and capital.
The score is intended as a directional measure of wealth mobility competitiveness and should not be interpreted as a measure of actual millionaire inflows, outflows, or migration forecasts.
Wealth Mobility Classifications are informed primarily by a jurisdiction’s Wealth Mobility Competitiveness Score, together with broader qualitative considerations relating to investor access, market relevance, policy developments, and observed wealth mobility trends.
These classifications are informed by a combination of structural competitiveness scores, policy developments, geopolitical conditions, market intelligence, and broader wealth mobility trends. They should not be interpreted as measures of economic performance or national prosperity, but rather as indicators of factors influencing internationally mobile wealth behavior.
1. Leading Wealth Mobility Jurisdiction
Jurisdictions demonstrating exceptional performance across the majority of wealth mobility indicators and exhibiting a strong combination of investor access, policy competitiveness, institutional quality, resilience, and international optionality.
2. Strong Wealth Mobility Jurisdiction
Jurisdictions offering consistently attractive conditions for globally mobile wealth and performing strongly across multiple dimensions of the framework.
3. Competitive Wealth Mobility Jurisdiction
Jurisdictions demonstrating competitive positioning across key dimensions of the framework and offering attractive wealth mobility advantages within specific regions, markets, or use cases.
4. Emerging Wealth Mobility Jurisdiction
Jurisdictions exhibiting improving characteristics and growing relevance within the global wealth mobility landscape.
5. Competitive Jurisdiction Under Pressure
Jurisdictions that continue to demonstrate strong structural competitiveness but are experiencing increasing pressure from policy changes, fiscal reforms, regulatory developments, or shifting wealth mobility dynamics that may influence future attractiveness for internationally mobile wealth.
6. Jurisdiction Facing Structural Wealth Mobility Challenges
Jurisdictions where a combination of policy, economic, regulatory, demographic, or geopolitical factors may be reducing competitiveness and contributing to increased outbound diversification or wealth mobility activity among internationally mobile individuals and families.
7. Jurisdiction Experiencing Sustained Wealth Mobility Pressure
Jurisdictions facing persistent structural, economic, political, or geopolitical challenges that may affect long-term wealth retention, international investor confidence, and the ability to attract or retain globally mobile wealth.
The Global Wealth Mobility Framework draws on two distinct bodies of source material: the academic literature on the economic and legal determinants of high-net-worth migration, and the publicly available data used to score jurisdictions on each of the framework’’s ‘12 dimensions. This appendix sets out both. The academic literature in Part 1 grounds the framework’’s choice of dimensions and their relative weights. The data sources in Part 2 are the inputs used for scoring, organized by what they provided to the framework.
The references below are the principal academic works that informed the framework’s structural design. They are organized by the question each body of work addresses.
Tax-Induced International Migration of High Earners
Kleven, H. J., Landais, C., and Saez, E. (2013). "Taxation and International Migration of Superstars: Evidence from the European Football Market." American Economic Review, 103 (5): 1892–1924.
Kleven, H. J., Landais, C., Saez, E., and Schultz, E. (2014). "Migration and Wage Effects of Taxing Top Earners: Evidence from the Foreigners' Tax Scheme in Denmark." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129 (1): 333–378.
Akcigit, U., Baslandze, S., and Stantcheva, S. (2016). "Taxation and the International Mobility of Inventors." American Economic Review, 106 (10): 2930–2981.
Moretti, E., and Wilson, D. J. (2017). "The Effect of State Taxes on the Geographical Location of Top Earners: Evidence from Star Scientists." American Economic Review, 107 (7): 1858–1903.
Agrawal, D. R., and Foremny, D. (2019). "Relocation of the Rich: Migration in Response to Top Tax Rate Changes from Spanish Reforms." Review of Economics and Statistics, 101 (2): 214–232.
Bertoli, S., and Fernández-Huertas Moraga, J. (2013). "Multilateral Resistance to Migration." Journal of Development Economics, 102: 79–100.
Grogger, J., and Hanson, G. H. (2011). "Income Maximization and the Selection and Sorting of International Migrants." Journal of Development Economics, 95 (1): 42–57.
UK Non-Dom Regime, Super-Rich Tax Reform, and HNWI Mobility Responses
Advani, A., Burgherr, D., and Summers, A. (2025). "Taxation and Migration by the Super-Rich." CESifo Working Paper No. 11870. Earlier versions: IZA Discussion Paper No. 16432 (2023); CAGE Working Paper No. 630 (2022).
Advani, A., Burgherr, D., Savage, M., and Summers, A. (2022). "The UK's Global Economic Elite: A Sociological Analysis Using Tax Data." CAGE Working Paper No. 632, University of Warwick / London School of Economics.
Advani, A., Hughson, H., and Summers, A. (2023). "How Much Tax Do the Rich Really Pay? Evidence from the UK." Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 39 (3): 406–437.
Advani, A., Burgherr, D., and Summers, A. (2022). "Reforming the Non-Dom Regime: Revenue Estimates." CAGE Policy Briefing No. 38, University of Warwick.
Friedman, S., Gronwald, V., Summers, A., and Taylor, E. (2024). "Tax Flight? Britain's Wealthiest and Their Attachment to Place." International Inequalities Institute Working Paper No. 131, London School of Economics.
Wealth, Place, and Millionaire Mobility
Young, C. (2017). The Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight: How Place Still Matters for the Rich. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Young, C., Varner, C., Lurie, I. Z., and Prisinzano, R. (2016). "Millionaire Migration and Taxation of the Elite: Evidence from Administrative Data." American Sociological Review, 81 (3): 421–446.
Young, C., and Varner, C. (2011). "Millionaire Migration and State Taxation of Top Incomes: Evidence from a Natural Experiment." National Tax Journal, 64 (2): 255–284.
Stubenbord, A. (2025). "Mapping Global Billionaire Migration: Evidence from the IDEE Wealth Dataset." SocArXiv Preprint 6a93z_v1.
Milanović, B. (2016). Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Citizenship by Investment and Global Mobility
Shachar, A. (2009). The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Shachar, A. (2017). "Citizenship for Sale?" In A. Shachar, R. Bauböck, I. Bloemraad, and M. Vink (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shachar, A. (2020). The Shifting Border: Legal Cartographies of Migration and Mobility. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Shachar, A., and Hirschl, R. (2014). "On Citizenship, States, and Markets." Journal of Political Philosophy, 22 (2): 231–257.
Shachar, A., and Bauböck, R. (eds.) (2014). "Should Citizenship Be for Sale?" EUI Working Paper RSCAS 2014/01, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute.
Surak, K. (2021). "Millionaire Mobility and the Sale of Citizenship." Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47 (1): 166–189.
Surak, K. (2023). The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Džankić, J. (2019). The Global Market for Investor Citizenship. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Abrahamian, A. A. (2015). The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen. New York: Columbia Global Reports.
Wealth Tax, Exit Tax, and Behavioral Responses to Capital Taxation
Advani, A., and Tarrant, H. (2021). "Behavioural Responses to a Wealth Tax." CAGE Working Paper No. 577 / The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1368, University of Warwick.
Jakobsen, K., Jakobsen, K., Kleven, H. J., and Zucman, G. (2020). "Wealth Taxation and Wealth Accumulation: Theory and Evidence from Denmark." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 135 (1): 329–388.
Brülhart, M., Gruber, J., Krapf, M., and Schmidheiny, K. (2022). "Behavioral Responses to Wealth Taxes: Evidence from Switzerland." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 14 (4): 111–150.
Saez, E., and Zucman, G. (2019). "Progressive Wealth Taxation." Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Fall 2019: 437–533.
Bilateral Migration Modeling and Global Migration Flows
Abel, G. J., and Cohen, J. E. (2019). "Bilateral International Migration Flow Estimates for 200 Countries." Scientific Data (Nature), 6: 82.
Borjas, G. J. (1999). "The Economic Analysis of Immigration." In O. Ashenfelter and D. Card (eds.), Handbook of Labor Economics, Vol. 3A. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Every dimension score within the framework is anchored to publicly available, authoritative data. Sources are organized below by the category of input they provided. Where multiple datasets from the same institution were used, the relevant series are listed under a single entry.
International Institutional Sources
International Monetary Fund (IMF). World Economic Outlook database; Balance of Payments Statistics; Government Finance Statistics; Article IV country consultations; International Financial Statistics. https://www.imf.org/en/Data
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). International Migration Outlook (annual editions, 2023–2025); OECD Tax Database; OECD Income Distribution Database; OECD International Migration Database (flow database for 38 member states); OECD International Tax Architecture (ITA) policy framework; OECD Better Life Index. https://www.oecd.org/en/data.html
World Bank. World Development Indicators; Worldwide Governance Indicators; Foreign Direct Investment statistics; Migration and Remittances Data (KNOMAD bilateral remittance matrix); bilateral migration matrix. https://data.worldbank.org
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), Population Division. International Migrant Stock 2024 (bilateral origin-destination stock data); World Population Prospects 2024; demographic analysis publications. https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). World Investment Report (annual); foreign direct investment statistics. https://unctad.org/topic/investment
Eurostat / European Commission. Migration and Migrant Population Statistics (migr_emi2 annual emigration flows; migr_pop1ctz population by citizenship; migr_imm series for immigration); Income and Living Conditions. EU Regulation 862/2007 mandates legally-defined migration reporting. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Global Trends; refugee, asylum-seeker, internally displaced, and stateless populations data; situation-specific data portals (Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, South Sudan); semi-annual updates. https://www.unhcr.org
International Organization for Migration (IOM). Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM); Flow Monitoring Matrix (FMM); Migration Governance Index (MGI); World Migration Report (synthesis publication); Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC). https://www.iom.int
Country Risk, Institutional Quality, and Geopolitical Stability
Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). Global Peace Index (annual). https://www.economicsandpeace.org/global-peace-index/
Damodaran, A. (NYU Stern School of Business). Country Risk Premium dataset, updated periodically. https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/
Transparency International. Corruption Perceptions Index (annual). https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi
Freedom House. Freedom in the World (annual). https://freedomhouse.org
Fund for Peace. Fragile States Index (annual). https://fragilestatesindex.org
ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project). Conflict event tracking and political violence data. https://acleddata.com
Tax Policy and Regime Data
National tax authorities — including HM Revenue & Customs (UK), Internal Revenue Service (US), German Federal Ministry of Finance (Bundesministerium der Finanzen), Agenzia delle Entrate (Italy), Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, UAE Federal Tax Authority, Reserve Bank of India (FEMA outward remittance data), Norwegian Ministry of Finance, Brazilian Ministry of Finance, Argentine Central Bank (BCRA), Central Bank of Egypt, Central Bank of Nigeria, State Bank of Pakistan, and equivalent agencies across in-scope jurisdictions.
PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries. https://taxsummaries.pwc.com
Deloitte International Tax Highlights. https://www.deloitte.com
EY Worldwide Personal Tax and Immigration Guide. https://www.ey.com
Tax Foundation. International Tax Competitiveness Index (annual); national tax data. https://taxfoundation.org
Immigration, Residence, and Citizenship Policy
National immigration authorities and government policy documents — primary source for each jurisdiction's residence, naturalisation, and investor programme criteria, processing requirements, thresholds, and reform legislation. Includes Spain Golden Visa removal (April 2025), UK non-dom abolition (April 2025), UAE Golden Visa expansion (2022 onwards), New Zealand Active Investor Plus refresh (2025), Germany § 6 AStG exit tax reform (2022), and equivalent national reforms across in-scope jurisdictions.
Henley & Partners. Henley Passport Index (sourced from IATA Timatic bilateral visa requirements database, updated monthly); Henley Private Wealth Migration Report (2025 and 2026 editions); programme portfolio documentation; quarterly enquiry and application activity data. https://www.henleyglobal.com
Migration Policy Institute (MPI). Country profiles and immigration policy analysis. https://www.migrationpolicy.org
European Migration Network (EMN). National policy reports and ad hoc queries. https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/networks/european-migration-network-emn_en
Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX). 2020 structural baseline for destination-country policy scoring. https://www.mipex.eu
National Statistical Offices and Origin-Country Data
Principal national sources used for origin-country and emigration data: Office for National Statistics (UK, Long-Term International Migration); Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis, Germany); INSEE (France); Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE, Spain); Statistics Canada; Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS); Stats NZ; TurkStat (Türkiye); INDEC (Argentina); Statistics Norway (SSB); Statistics Sweden (SCB); Statistics Denmark (DST); Statistics Finland; Statistics Netherlands (CBS); Statistics Austria; National Immigration Administration of China; Philippine Statistics Authority. Each provides nationally-published migration tables, demographic releases, and emigration data where legally compiled.
Origin-country labor ministries and emigration registries used for diaspora and outbound-flow tracking: Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET, Bangladesh); Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment (BEOE, Pakistan); Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE, Nepal); BP2MI (Indonesia); Department of Migrant Workers / POEA (Philippines); Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE); India Ministry of External Affairs; Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO); Marocains du Monde (Morocco MFA); Türkiye MFA; AIRE (Italians abroad register); Korea Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Specialist HNWI Mobility and Visa Datasets
IDEE (Investor and Entrepreneur Migration Database). Billionaire cross-country migration tracking 2010–2025; 3,103-record dataset linking birthplace to current Forbes-listed residence.
US Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs. Immigrant Visa Issuances by Foreign State of Chargeability and Visa Class (annual and monthly statistical reports); EB-5 Investor Visa data. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-statistics.html
IIUSA (Invest in the USA). EB-5 Visa Data Dashboard. https://iiusa.org/eb5-visa-data-dashboard/
IDP Education. Emerging Futures international student surveys (Wave 3, 2023; n=20,000). https://www.idp.com
Bilateral Global Migration Flow Estimates (Abel and Cohen, 2019). Bayesian cohort-component estimates of gross bilateral flows from UN DESA stock changes, used for structural corridor mapping in non-OECD contexts.
Climate Resilience and Environmental Data
AlphaGeo. Climate Risk & Resilience Index (CRRI); Country Resilience and Adaptation indices.
Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative (ND-GAIN). Country Index (annual). https://gain.nd.edu/our-work/country-index/
Verisk Maplecroft. Climate Change Vulnerability Index. https://www.maplecroft.com
The literature in Part 1 informs the framework’s structural design — which dimensions are included, how they relate to wealth mobility decisions, and how they are weighted relative to one another. It does not constitute an exhaustive bibliography of work on high-net-worth migration, but the principal references underpinning the framework’s analytical foundations.
The data sources in Part 2 are the inputs used to score jurisdictions on each dimension. The framework draws preferentially from primary sources — government policy documents, central bank data, national statistical offices, and major international institutions — over aggregator publications, in order to preserve auditability and reduce citation chain length. Where aggregator sources (such as the Migration Data Portal, MPI Data Hub, or the IOM World Migration Report) were consulted during research, they were used as discovery tools rather than scored inputs, and the underlying primary sources were cited directly.
Every individual sub-criterion score within the framework is traceable to one or more of the sources listed above. The framework is built on publicly available data so that scores remain auditable and the methodology remains transparent across annual refreshes.
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