The ninth annual Human Freedom Index, is the most comprehensive freedom index so far created for a globally meaningful set of countries and jurisdictions, representing 98.8 percent of the world’s population. The index, copublished by the Cato Institute and the Fraser Institute in Canada, ranks 165 countries based on 86 distinct indicators of personal, civil, and economic freedom, using data from 2000 to 2021, the most recent year for which sufficient data are available.
The second year of the coronavirus pandemic witnessed a further decline in global freedom. From 2019 to 2021, 90 percent of the world’s population saw a fall in overall freedom, including significant declines in the rule of law and freedom of movement, expression, association and assembly, and freedom to trade.
The findings in the Human Freedom Index suggest that freedom plays an important role in human well‐being, and they offer opportunities for further research into the complex ways in which freedom influences, and can be influenced by, political regimes, economic development, and the whole range of indicators of human well‐being.
