The Cato Institute recently annual report It’s about the Human Freedom Index. This index combines measures of economic and personal freedom. The report states:
The Human Freedom Index (HFI) presents a broad measure of human freedom, understood as the absence of coercive constraints.
I think the authors, good scholars as they are, probably had some difficulty distinguishing between economic freedom and personal freedom. For example, to have real freedom of speech you must have some economic freedom. The freedom to buy paper and a printing press, or in today’s world the freedom to sign up with an Internet provider, or in the case of web publishing, the freedom to hire someone to write for your website is great enough.
Where does America stand? As the title suggests, we are ranked 17th out of a group of 165 countries. So it was a very short time to be in the top 10%.
Authors Ian Vásquez, Matthew D. Mitchell, Ryan Murphy, and Guillermina Sutter Schneider start with some bad news. Freedom around the world is lower than it was in 2019. They wrote:
On a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 represents more freedom, the average human freedom rating across the 165 jurisdictions fell from 6.98 in 2019 to 6.76 in 2020, 6.73 in 2021, and then increased to 6.82 in 2022. According to this coverage, 87.4% of the world’s population experienced a decline in human freedoms from 2019 to 2022, with more countries declining their rating (130) than increasing it (28), and leaving seven countries unchanged. It wasn’t. The sharp decline in freedoms that began in 2020 comes after several years of slow decline since a peak in 2007. Three years into the pandemic, global freedoms remain well below where they were in 2000.
Here are the top 10, in order:
Switzerland, New Zealand, Denmark, Luxembourg, Ireland, Finland (first 6), Australia, Iceland, Sweden (joint 7th) and Estonia took 10th place.
They continue:
Selected jurisdictions are ranked as follows: Canada (11), Japan (12), Germany (14), United Kingdom and United States (tied for 17th), Taiwan (19), Chile (31), South Korea (32) and 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), Iran (163). Of the ten regions, the regions with the highest degrees 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’s freedoms, as measured by the index’s five indicators, 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.
Ukraine is quite less free, only 17 countries higher than Russia. Is there a connection between human freedom and other important measures of human well-being? Yeah, that’s great. They write:
Jurisdictions in the top quartile of freedom enjoy significantly higher average per capita income ($56,366) than jurisdictions in the other quartiles. The average per capita income in the lowest free quantile is $15,826. HFI also found a strong, positive relationship between human freedom and democracy, and between human freedom and a variety of human well-being indicators, including tolerance, charitable giving, life expectancy, and environmental health.
The report is long. One nice thing is that you can select a country and then see all the measurements for that country.
Are the indices perfect? you’re welcome. One of the checks I did was to find out how freedom of expression is measured in the UK. If you’ve been following the UK lately, you’ll know that the police can come to your house and arrest you for posting ideas that other people don’t like. here example. However, “Media and Representation” received a 10.0 (highest score) from Freedom House. Likewise, there was one person from Canada, where I am from. It was referred to the so-called ‘Human Rights Court’. It expresses hatred and contempt for homosexuals. What he did was write a letter to the local newspaper complaining about pro-gay groups “using taxpayer money to propagandize young children” in public schools. However, the same Freedom House gave Canada a score of 10.0 on “Media and Representation.” John Leo, National Review Online, June 20, 2008; wrote:
After nearly six years of hearings, delays and arguments over the letter, the court found him and his group, the Concerned Christian Coalition, guilty. As punishment, Boissoin was ordered to pay a hefty fine, apologize in writing, and never again make negative comments about homosexuality anywhere, including in speeches or on the Internet. He refuses to comply.
So, as I said, it’s not an indicator of perfect freedom.
