The Cato Institute recently released its annual report on the Human Freedom Index. This index combines a measure of economic freedom and a measure of personal freedom. The report states:
The Human Freedom Index (HFI) provides a broad measure of human freedom, understood as the absence of coercive constraints.
The authors are good scholars, so I think they probably had a little trouble distinguishing between economic freedom and personal freedom. For example, substantial press freedom requires some degree of economic freedom. Freedom to buy paper or printing presses, or in today’s world, freedom to subscribe to an internet provider, or in the case of web publishing, freedom to subscribe to an internet provider. There is plenty of freedom to hire someone to write for your website.
Where does the United States stand? If you look at the title, you can see that we are 17th out of a group of 165 countries. In other words, they were very close to being in the top 10%.
Authors Ian Vasquez, Matthew D. Mitchell, Ryan Murphy, and Guillermina Sutter Schneider start with the bad news. The world is less free than it was in 2019. They wrote:
On a scale of 0 to 10 (with 10 representing more freedom), the average human freedom rating across 165 jurisdictions fell from 6.98 in 2019 to 6.76 in 2020, 6.73 in 2021, and then In 2022, it rose to 6.82. Based on this coverage, 87.4 percent of the world’s population experienced a decline in human freedom between 2019 and 2022, with more jurisdictions decreasing their ratings (130) than increasing their ratings (28). The number of jurisdictions that remained the same was seven. The sharp decline in freedom that began in 2020 follows several years of gradual decline after hitting a high point in 2007. In the third year of the pandemic, global freedom remains far below what it was in 2000.
Here are the top 10 in order.
The 10 countries are Switzerland, New Zealand, Denmark, Luxembourg, Ireland, and Finland (the first six), followed by Australia, Iceland, Sweden (tied for seven), and Estonia.
They continue:
The selected jurisdictions are ranked as follows: Canada (11), Japan (12), Germany (14), UK and US (tied 17), Taiwan (19), Chile (31), South Korea (32), France ( 34), Brazil (70), South Africa (73), Argentina (80), Mexico (94), India (110), Ukraine (122), Nigeria (126), Russia (139), Turkey (142), China ( 150), Saudi Arabia (155), Venezuela (159), and Iran (163). The most liberal of the 10 regions are North America (Canada and the United States), Western Europe, and Oceania. The lowest levels are in the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia. Women-specific freedoms, as measured by the five indicators in the index, are most protected in North America, Western Europe, and East Asia, and least protected in the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia. .
Note that Ukraine is pretty lame, only 17 countries higher than Russia. Is there a connection between human freedom and other important measures of human well-being? Yes, finally. They write:
Jurisdictions in the top quartile of freedom have significantly higher average per capita incomes ($56,366) than jurisdictions in other quartiles. The average per capita income in the least liberal quartile is $15,826. The HFI also shows strong relationships between human freedom and democracy, and between human freedom and a range of indicators of human well-being, including measures such as generosity, charitable giving, life expectancy, and environmental health. We also find that there is a positive relationship.
The report is long. One nice thing is that if you select a country, you will see all the measures for that country.
Is the index perfect? Not at all. One of the checks I did was to see how freedom of speech is measured in the UK. If you’ve been following the UK lately, you may know that if you post ideas that others don’t like, the police can come to your house and arrest you. An example is shown below. Still, “Media and Expression” received a 10.0 (the highest possible) from Freedom House. Similarly, in my home country of Canada, a man was taken to a so-called Human Rights Tribunal for displaying hatred and contempt for homosexuals. What he did was write a letter to a local newspaper complaining about gay advocacy groups that were “using tax dollars to advertise to young children” in public schools. However, the same Freedom House gives Canada a 10.0 rating for “Media and Expression.” John Leo wrote in National Review Online on June 20, 2008:
After nearly six years of hearings, delays and correspondence, the court convicted him and his group, the Union of Concerned Christians. As punishment, Boissoin was ordered to pay a large fine, issue a written apology, and never again make negative comments about homosexuality in speeches or online. he refuses to comply.
So, as I say, it’s not a perfect indicator of freedom.
