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NCBNational Capability Benchmark
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Challenge the benchmark

Choose a score and give the benchmark a specific reason to reconsider it.

When you submit, the form attaches the current score and confidence for the country and capability you chose.

Submissions are public and start as awaiting review. A maintainer can add a response and signature after review.

Where does Japan stand on Shared Purpose?

Dataset 9.3.0

This page reads one capability from the published data and is recomputed with every release. It separates what Japan does, which makes the score, from what the country has, which sits beside the score, and places the country among the 10 countries at the nearest income. The text describes the data and recommends no policy.

What does the score rest on?

Score41.7Confidence0.23very thin evidence

Confidence is in the very thin band, so the score rests on little evidence.

The Shared Purpose score is the equal-weight mean of the positions of two indicators on a 0 to 100 scale that every country sets together. Confidence measures the evidence behind the score and sits beside it as a second number.

The Shared Purpose score tracks GDP per capita at r = 0.25 across 118 countries.

Observed indicators

  • Tax revenue

    no value

    The latest value is from 1993, more than 15 years old, so it does not count toward the score.

    Position on the scaleno valuePeer median60.110 peers with a value

  • Income inequality

    32.3 Gini 0-100

    World Bank (SI.POV.GINI), 2020

    Position on the scale75.9Peer median75.69 peers with a value

  • Civic participation

    3.3 % mentioning

    Joint EVS/WVS (A080_01), 2022

    Position on the scale7.4Peer median20.17 peers with a value

No comparable source yet, so lowering confidence: sense of national belonging, volunteering, and political polarisation.

No condition is published beside Shared Purpose in this release, so the page shows only the indicators that make the score.

Where does Japan sit among its peers?

The peers are the 10 countries at the nearest income. Income is GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, in constant international dollars, for the latest year the World Bank publishes, and distance is measured on a log scale, where half and double are equally far. No country is picked by hand, and the set changes when the data does.

In this release peer income runs from US$ 44,172 to US$ 53,993, and Japan has US$ 48,283 (2025).

0255075100Japan
  • Solid ring: usable or good evidence
  • Broken ring: thin evidence, opening further as confidence falls
  • The shaded band is the middle half of the set and the line inside it is the median.
  • New Zealand: 82.0
  • United Kingdom: 75.6
  • Czechia: 73.2
  • Slovenia: 71.2
  • Israel: 62.0
  • Croatia: 55.5
  • Italy: 51.5
  • Poland: 49.3
  • Spain: 44.6
  • Lithuania: 44.2
  • Japan: 41.7

What separates Japan from its peers?

Japan scores 41.7 on Shared Purpose, below the median of the 10 scored peers, which is 58.8.

Indicators placed above the peer median on the scale: income inequality.

Indicators placed below the peer median on the scale: civic participation.

Each sentence compares one position with one median. Why a difference exists, and what to do about it, lie outside this data.

What this reading does not show

  • A national score is a coarse proxy. A capability forms in firms, cities, networks and groups below the level of the country, and a national average only describes the conditions they work in.
  • Peers share income and nothing else. Size, production structure, region and political regime are outside the rule, and a set of 10 countries can change with any revision to GDP.
  • An r reads the whole set at once and says nothing about one country alone. A correlation does not show a cause either.
  • The known artefacts that bear on Shared Purpose, described on the limits page: artefact A5, artefact A12, artefact A13, artefact A15.
  • And the ones every score in the benchmark carries: artefact A8, artefact A10.