Global Freedom Has Been in Steady Decline

Today, the Cato Institute releases the tenth edition of the annual Human Freedom Index that is co-published with the Fraser Institute. The report paints a picture of the state of global freedom and of freedom within 165 countries, drawing on 86 indicators of personal, economic, and civil liberties that go back to the year 2000.

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The index reflects the belief that freedom should be measured carefully because it has inherent value and because it plays a central role in human progress. The report defines freedom as the absence of coercive constraint and considers it a social concept that recognizes the dignity of the individual.

Key Lessons Learned
Over a Decade The following findings come from this year’s report—co-authored by Cato Vice President for International Studies Ian Vásquez, along with Matthew Mitchell, Ryan Murphy, and Guillermina Sutter Schneider—and from a decade of publishing the index.

• The top three countries in this year’s report are Switzerland, New Zealand, and Denmark; the bottom three are Iran, Yemen, and Syria, in descending order. The United States ranks in 17th place; it was 7th in the year 2000.
• The high point in global human freedom since 2000, measured on a population weighted basis, was the year 2007. It was followed by a slow decline in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and then saw a precipitous decline in 2020 with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, setting any gains to global freedom back more than two decades. Global freedom saw a small improvement in the third year of the pandemic, 2022, the last year for which internationally comparable data is available.
• Global freedom remained at a level far below what it was in 2000.
• Compared to 2007, most countries are less free, having lost a significant amount of economic or personal freedom or both.
• Human freedom is strongly and positively related to well-being, including income, innovation, social tolerance, environmental performance, levels of charity, life expectancy, lower child mortality, etc.
• Economic and personal freedom are strongly related. Those who value high levels of personal liberty (such as freedom of expression, of religion, or of personal lifestyle choices), should value a relatively high level of economic freedom, which is supportive of the other freedoms.
• The world suffers from a high degree of inequality in freedom. Only 14.1% of the world’s population lives in the top quartile of countries in the index. Fully 77% of the world’s population lives in the least free countries in the bottom half of the index.
• Nicaragua, Syria, Turkey, Hong Kong, and Hungary are among the top 10 jurisdictions that most saw their freedom decline since 2007, the year that marked the highpoint in global freedom. Hong Kong’s ranking declined from 3rd place in 2010 to 50th in this year’s report.
• Out of 10 regions, the Middle East and North Africa is the least free and is one of the regions that most saw its freedom fall since 2000.
• Global freedom of expression has been on a long-term decline since 2000 and is the category of freedom that saw the greatest drop since that year.

To learn more about country ratings and rankings or about the above or many other findings, see the index here.

Ian Vásquez is Vice President for International Studies at the Cato Institute, Matthew Mitchell is a senior fellow in the Centre for Economic Freedom at the Fraser Institute, Ryan Murphy is a research associate professor in the Bridwell Institute for Economic Freedom at SMU Cox School of Business, and Guillermina Sutter Schneider is a data scientist and information designer based in Berlin.

If you would like to speak to Ian about the Human Freedom Index, please do not hesitate to reach out.