The vast majority of the world’s population (83%) has seen a decline in freedom since 2008. That includes decreases in freedom in the ten most populous countries of the world—China, India, United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, and Mexico.
So finds the Human Freedom Index 2021 (HFI) co-published today by the Cato Institute and the Fraser Institute in Canada. The index uses 82 distinct indicators of economic, personal, and civil freedoms to rate 165 jurisdictions from 2008 to 2019, the most recent year for which internationally comparable data is available.
The decline in fundamental rights represents a disturbing trend that was occurring even before the world experienced the COVID-19 pandemic and its social and political effects. The areas that saw the largest falls globally were freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and freedom of association, assembly, and civil society. Although our report does not yet pick up freedom data from 2020, we fully expect to see a deterioration in global freedom indicators in future reports.
We also find that there is a highly unequal distribution of freedom in the world, with only 14.6 percent of the world’s population living in the top quartile of jurisdictions in the HFI and 40.3 percent living in the bottom quartile. The gap between the most free and the least free has also widened since 2008.
This year’s report once again shows that freedom is strongly associated with prosperity and improvements in well-being. Countries in the top quartile of the index, for example, have a much higher income per person ($48,748) than those in the bottom quartile ($11,259). The report tracks countries over time, allowing us to better see specific developments. For example, it shows the effects of various forms of populist rule on overall freedom. See the cases of India, Venezuela, and Hungary below.
Most countries have not had such dramatic deteriorations, and some have shown notable improvements. Taiwan and Estonia stand out not only because of their large increases in freedom, but also because they’ve achieved as much starting from relatively high levels of freedom. (See below.)
The United States has seen a long-term decline in its freedom, having ranked 7th in 2008 and 15th in this year’s report, and it is now tied with Germany and Japan. The top five countries in the index are Switzerland, New Zealand, Denmark, Estonia, and Ireland. The bottom five are Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Venezuela, and Syria.
Find out much more by reading the index here.
