The Economic Freedom of the World: 2017 Annual Report is out today. Co‐​published in the United States by the Fraser Institute (Canada) and the Cato Institute, it continues to find a strong relationship between economic freedom on the one hand, and prosperity and other indicators of human well‐​being on the other.

The United States ranks 11 out of 159 countries, indicating a slight improvement recently in its rating, but its economic freedom remains far below what it was in the year 2000, when it began a long decline. Since 1970, the index has typically ranked the United States among the top four countries. The top countries in this year’s report are Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland and Ireland. The least economically free countries are the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and Venezuela.

There is an important innovation in this year’s report: it takes into account inequality in the economic freedoms enjoyed by men and women. Some countries don’t afford women the same level of such freedoms as men, so the index, for the first time, adjusts for these disparities. In her chapter, Rosemarie Fike explains the data and methodology that she used to create a gender disparity index, one that was then used to adjust the economic freedom ratings.

Most countries are only slightly affected (or are not at all affected) by the gender adjustment on the index. However, some 20 countries saw notable changes to their scores. Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, for example, dropped significantly in the index. Over time, the world has seen shifts in the unequal economic freedoms of men and women. The overall level of gender disparity in economic freedom in the world has decreased since 1970. Women are enjoying more economic freedom than before. The locus of inequality has also changed. From 1970 to 1990, African countries dominated the list of nations with the worst gender disparity scores; since 1995, countries in the Middle East and North Africa now dominate that list. Another finding: the greater the level of economic freedom, the more likely that men and women will receive equal legal treatment.

Another chapter looks at the relationship between economic freedom and anti‐​immigrant populist parties. Although it is often asserted that globalization is causing much of that populist sentiment, authors Krishna Chaitanya Vadlamannati and Indra de Soysa find that countries with lower levels of economic freedom and higher levels of state welfare spending see more support for nativist, populist parties. It appears that some of the policies intended to provide social protection from the market might be encouraging populist politics.

Read about those and other findings in the new report here.