Download the 2019 Human Freedom Index

The Human Freedom Index, 2019

The fifth annual Human Freedom Index, now available free online, is the most comprehensive measure of freedom ever created for a large number of countries around the globe. The 2019 Index presents the state of human freedom in the world based on a broad measurement of personal, civil, and economic freedom that includes freedom of movement, women’s freedoms, crime and violence, and legal discrimination against same-sex relationships.

Authored by Ian Vasquez, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, and Tanja Porčnik, a Cato Institute adjunct scholar and president of the Visio Institute based in Slovenia, The Human Freedom Index helps clarify relationships between freedom and other social and economic phenomena, and illustrates how the various facets of freedom interact with one another.

The Index, co-published by the Cato Institute, the Fraser Institute, and the Liberales Institut at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, ranks 162 countries based on 76 distinct indicators using data from 2008 to 2017, the most recent year for which sufficient data are available.

In this new Index the United States ranks 15th. Overall, the report finds global freedom has fallen slightly since 2008. “The Rule of Law continues to be a weak point for the United States, which has relatively low ratings when it comes to such areas as the protection of property rights, the enforcement of contracts, and criminal justice,” said says co-author Ian Vásquez. “The Rule of Law plays a fundamental role in upholding liberty, so anyone who cares about freedom in the United States should be concerned with its evolution.”