New Edition of “Freedom in the Fifty States”

The Cato Institute has recently published the latest edition of the excellent Freedom in the Fifty States, its ranking of state and local policies on economic and personal freedom, authored by political scientists William Ruger and Jason Sorens. Variations in state policy on these issues have major impacts on human freedom and welfare, and also on interstate migration patterns. These rankings are of obvious interest to libertarians; but they are also useful to social scientists and policy analysts with a wide range of views. The book includes a wealth of data on a variety of state policies affecting freedom, as well as overall rankings of state policy, rankings of economic and personal freedom considered separately, and rankings based on a range of subcategories.

Here are the top 10 states, ranked on the combined index of overall freedom (with personal freedom, and two components of economic freedom—fiscal and regulatory) each ranked equally as about 1/3 of the total):
1. New Hampshire 0.71
2. Florida 0.57
3. South Dakota 0.52
4. Nevada 0.51
5. Arizona 0.44
6. Tennessee 0.38
7. Michigan 0.31
8. Missouri 0.30
9. Georgia 0.28
10. Indiana 0.27

Blue states do much better on personal freedom, ranked separately:
1. Nevada 0.278
2. Arizona 0.247
3. Maine 0.231
4. New Hampshire 0.204
5. New Mexico 0.198
6. Vermont 0.187
7. Montana 0.147
8. Missouri 0.144
9. Massachusetts 0.138
10. West Virginia 0.128

The economic freedom ranking is largely dominated by red and purple states:
1. New Hampshire 0.50
2. Florida 0.48
3. South Dakota 0.43
4. Tennessee 0.35
5. Georgia 0.24
6. Texas 0.24
7. Idaho 0.23
8. Nevada 0.23
9. Wyoming 0.23
10. Michigan 0.22

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