How free are you and how free is your country? The question matters because the degree of freedom you enjoy greatly impacts human well-being.

Perceptions matter, too. If we think the world has gotten worse as economies and societies have become more open, we are liable to turn our back to that openness in favor of more government control over some aspects of our lives. Non-democratic regimes also rely on such narratives to justify their power grabs.

That is indeed what seems to have been happening in much of the world to varying degrees over the past 15 years. In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, we’ve seen a rise of illiberalism in various forms — populism of the right and left, nationalism, fascism and hybrid forms of authoritarianism.

That illiberal trend has happened in rich and poor countries, democracies and nondemocracies, and in societies as distinct from each other as those of Hungary and Venezuela, China and Turkey, and India and the United States.

The Human Freedom Index — a comprehensive measurement of personal, economic and civil liberties for countries representing 99% of the world’s population — has carefully tracked those trends. Measuring freedom in all its dimensions matters because freedom of speech, the rule of law, freedom to trade, personal safety, freedom of religion and other indicators of basic rights have inherent value and their vast expansion around the world during this era of globalization is a sign of human progress.

But freedom also plays a central role in the whole range of human progress. Countries that are freer are more prosperous. For example, countries in the top quartile of the index enjoy a significantly higher average income per person ($47,421) than those in other quartiles; the average such income in the least-free quartile is $14,157.

The same positive relationship exists with countless indicators of human development. There is a strong relationship between human freedom and life spans, access to safe drinking water, education, decreased international conflicts, lower maternal mortality rates and so on.

We should not be surprised that in our current era of globalization, the world has seen unprecedented improvements in human well-being. As my Swedish colleague Johan Norberg points out in a new essay for the Cato Institute, if we look at such indicators over just the past two decades, “this has been the 20 best years in history.”

“Around a third of the income level mankind has ever attained was produced during these two decades,” he explains. “Global extreme poverty was reduced by more than 130,000 people — every single day. The child mortality rate almost halved: 4.4 million fewer children died in 2022 than in 2002. Chronic hunger was reduced by almost a third.” The gains have especially benefitted developing countries as they catch up to the rich. For the first time in more than two centuries, global inequality in income and in terms of well-being has been falling at a notable rate.

So it is not good news that freedom has lately been on the decline. The COVID pandemic dramatically reduced most freedoms for almost all of the world’s population and we have surely not returned to the levels of freedom that we enjoyed in January 2020.

Crises such as wars, financial turmoil and terrorism have also played a role in shaping people’s perspectives about the overall state of human well-being and have contributed to long-term global declines in freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom to trade, for example.

But if we want to continue to greatly increase standards of living, we need to get back on the path of freedom and move away from populism and other forms of illiberalism. Unfortunately, the United States does not seem to be on that path. It ranked seventh in the Human Freedom Index in 2000 and now ranks 17th, with no signs of future improvement.

Argentina, by contrast, has a new president with a mandate to vastly increase freedom in his country, which populism destroyed, impoverishing what a century ago was one of the world’s richest nations. Out of 165 countries in the index, for example, Argentina ranks in 163rd place in terms of openness to trade, 161st in terms of stable money, and 143rd in terms of over-regulation.

In that sense, Argentina is a cautionary tale for the United States. Let’s hope it now sets an example for the United States and the world.