A few years back I stumbled upon an index of indexes, the State of World Liberty Index. The index is simply a combination of economic and social indicators of freedom from the Frasier and CATO institute's Economic Freedom in the World Project, Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom, Freedom House's Freedom in the World, and Reporters without Borders' Press Freedom Index.
Since first discovering the index, I've attempted from time to time to contact it's creator to update the index values, and improve upon it's measures. However, I've been unsuccessful, and I believe the e-mail on the website is no longer operable.
For 2008, I've taken the method used in the original State of World Liberty Index and simply updated it's values. There are many improvements we can make to this system, such as using more nuanced measures of political and social freedom, but the existing index does result in some interesting figures, particularly when comparing it to the same index from 3 years back. As a reminder, the index is measuring liberty in each of these countries from a year ago. With all the recent nationalization moves in the United States, we should expect it to be much lower today than the index demonstrates. The U.S. has already fallen 5 spots since 2006.
In the top tier with index scores >80 we have, in rank order:
1. Bahamas
2. Estonia
3. Iceland
4. Canada
4. Cyprus
4. Switzerland
4. Uruguay
8. Mauritius
8. United States
8. Lithuania
8. Ireland
In the bottom-most tier, we have only North Korea, with a score of 15.
The remaining countries lie somewhere in between, as depicted in the below map. The bluer the country, the more free it is. Green is somewhere in between, yellow is less free. As it transition toward red, liberty decreases. In addition to this map, I've posted the excel spreadsheet under my Papers and Projects page, and would be happy to provide more information upon request.
Since first discovering the index, I've attempted from time to time to contact it's creator to update the index values, and improve upon it's measures. However, I've been unsuccessful, and I believe the e-mail on the website is no longer operable.
For 2008, I've taken the method used in the original State of World Liberty Index and simply updated it's values. There are many improvements we can make to this system, such as using more nuanced measures of political and social freedom, but the existing index does result in some interesting figures, particularly when comparing it to the same index from 3 years back. As a reminder, the index is measuring liberty in each of these countries from a year ago. With all the recent nationalization moves in the United States, we should expect it to be much lower today than the index demonstrates. The U.S. has already fallen 5 spots since 2006.
In the top tier with index scores >80 we have, in rank order:
1. Bahamas
2. Estonia
3. Iceland
4. Canada
4. Cyprus
4. Switzerland
4. Uruguay
8. Mauritius
8. United States
8. Lithuania
8. Ireland
In the bottom-most tier, we have only North Korea, with a score of 15.
The remaining countries lie somewhere in between, as depicted in the below map. The bluer the country, the more free it is. Green is somewhere in between, yellow is less free. As it transition toward red, liberty decreases. In addition to this map, I've posted the excel spreadsheet under my Papers and Projects page, and would be happy to provide more information upon request.
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