New Economic Freedom Report on Prosperity, Gender Equality and Populism

TheEconomic Freedom of the World: 2017 Annual Reportis 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 Emir...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs