The Cato Institute recently launched its annual report on the Human Freedom Index. The index combines measures of economic freedom with measures of personal freedom. The report states:
The Human Freedom Index (HFI) presents a broad measure of human freedom, understood as the absence of coercive restrictions.
I suspect that because the authors were good scholars, they probably struggled a bit with the distinction between economic freedom and personal freedom. To have effective press freedom, for example, you need a certain economic freedom: the freedom to buy paper and printing presses or, in today’s world, the freedom to subscribe to an Internet provider and, if the web publication is large enough, the freedom to hire people to write for the website.
Where Does the United States Stand? The title says it all: we are number 17 in a group of 165 countries. So we were just a hair short of being in the top 10 percent.
The authors, Ian Vásquez, Matthew D. Mitchell, Ryan Murphy and Guillermina Sutter Schneider, start with bad news: freedom worldwide is lower than in 2019. They write:
On a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 representing greater freedom, the average human freedom rating for 165 jurisdictions fell from 6.98 in 2019 to 6.76 in 2020 and to 6.73 in 2021, then rose in 2022 to 6.82. Based on that reporting, 87.4 percent of the world’s population saw a decline in human freedom between 2019 and 2022, with many more jurisdictions declining (130) than increasing (28) their ratings, and seven jurisdictions unchanged. The sharp decline in freedom that began in 2020 comes after years of slow decline after peaking in 2007. In the third year of the pandemic, global freedom remained at levels well below 2000 levels.
Here are the top 10, in order:
Switzerland, New Zealand, Denmark, Luxembourg, Ireland and Finland (the first 6), and then Australia, Iceland and Sweden (tied at 7), and Estonia at 10.
They continue:
Selected jurisdictions are ranked as follows: Canada (11), Japan (12), Germany (14), Great Britain and the United States (tied at 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). Of the ten regions, the regions with the highest levels of freedom 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 five indicators in the index, are strongest 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 quite unfree, ranking only 17 countries higher than Russia. Is there a connection between human freedom and other important measures of human well-being? Yes, big. They write:
Jurisdictions in the top quartile of freedom enjoy significantly higher average per capita income ($56,366) than those in other quartiles; the average per capita income in the least free quartile is $15,826. The HFI also finds a strong, positive relationship between human freedom and democracy, and between human freedom and a range of indicators of human well-being, including tolerance, charitable giving, life expectancy and environmental health, among other measures.
The report is long. The nice thing is that you can choose a country and then see all the measures for that country.
Is the index perfect? Not at all. One check I did was to see how they rated freedom of speech in Britain. If you’ve been following Britain lately, you may know that the police can come to your door and arrest you for posting thoughts that other people don’t like. Here’s one predisposition. Yet ‘Media and Expression’ receives a 10.0 (the highest possible) from Freedom House. Likewise, in Canada, where I’m from, there was one man dragged before a so-called ‘human rights tribunal’ for showing hatred and contempt towards homosexuals. What the person did was write a letter to a local newspaper complaining about pro-gay groups “using taxpayer money to propagandize young children” in government schools. Yet the same Freedom House Canada gives a rating of 10.0 for ‘Media and Expression’. John Leo, in National Review Online, June 20, 2008, wrote:
After nearly six years of hearings, delays and arguments over the letter, the tribunal convicted him and his group, the Concerned Christian Coalition. As punishment, Boissoin was ordered to pay a hefty fine, apologize in writing and never again make negative comments about homosexuality in speeches, on the internet or anywhere else. He refuses to comply.
So, as I said, not a perfect index of freedom.