Freedom in Decline for 83% of the World ’s Population: New Human Freedom Index

Ian V ásquezThe vast majority of the world ’s population (83%) has seen a decline in freedom since 2008. That includes decreases in freedom in the ten most populous countries of the world—China, India, United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, and Mexico.So finds theHuman Freedom Index 2021(HFI) co ‐​published today by the Cato Institute and the Fraser Institute in Canada. The index uses 82 distinct indicators of economic, personal, and civil freedoms to rate 165 jurisdictions from 2008 to 2019, the most recent year for which internationally comparable data is available.The decline in fundamental rights represents a  disturbing trend that was occurring even before the world experienced the COVID-19 pandemic and its social and political effects. The areas that saw the largest falls globally were freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and freedom of association, assembly, and civil society. Although our rep ort does not yet pick up freedom data from 2020, we fully expect to see a deterioration in global freedom indicators in future reports.We also find that there is a  highly unequal distribution of freedom in the world, with only 14.6 percent of the world’s population living in the top quartile of jurisdictions in the HFI and 40.3 percent living in the bottom quartile. The gap between the most free and the least free has also widened since 2008.This year ’s report once again shows that freedom is strongly associated with pro...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs