The country ranked 68th out of 152 states in the recently released 2012 Human Freedom Index (HFI). Overall, the index ranks 152 countries from all over the world and evaluates information gathered from 70 different data sources from 2008 to 2012.
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The most free country might be a surprise.
Hong Kong tops the rankings followed by Switzerland, Finland, Denmark and New Zealand rounding out the top five. But it’s interesting – and more than a little depressing – to note that anytime freedom is on the decline, it’s not good. Gerolymatos said the pro-democracy protests that took place in Hong Kong last year appear to completely fly in the face of the report, which is titled The Human Freedom Index: A Global Measurement of Personal, Civil and Economic Freedom.
The editor of the study, Fred McMahon, stated that Canada earned its sixth place because it scored high on a number of freedoms.
Although the report cautioned that it did not establish causation, it said the data suggest “exploring the links between freedom and development further and testing the contribution of freedom to prosperity and other indicators of human well-being as has been done in the case of policies and institutions supportive of economic freedom”. You can’t really have freedom without safety and security.
The HFI captures the degree to which people are free to enjoy major liberties such as freedom of speech, religion, and association and assembly, as well as measures freedom of movement, women’s freedoms, crime and violence, and legal discrimination against same-sex relationships.
According to Vasquez, in addition to the expansion of regulatory state and drop in economic freedom, the war on terror, the war on drugs and the erosion of property rights have all likely contributed to the United States’ decline.
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We now rank just behind the tiny island of Mauritius and just ahead of the Czech Republic.
