The Human Freedom Index has been released for 2023, showing a continuing erosion in freedom worldwide. As the Cato and Fraser Institutes explain, “the United States ranks 17th on the index with its rating falling over time. In 2000, it ranked 7th.” In 2019 and 2021, it ranked 15th.
Both personal and economic freedom have fallen in the average country:
Global freedom hit a high point in 2007, followed by a slow decline until 2019. That period coincided with the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the rise of authoritarian populism and other forms of illiberalism around the world. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, freedom fell significantly and dropped to a slightly lower point in 2021. The decline affected 90 percent of the world’s population and set global freedom back more than two decades.
That’s the picture that the Human Freedom Index 2023, published today by the Cato Institute and the Fraser Institute, paints about the global evolution of personal, civil, and economic freedoms. The report uses eighty‐six distinct indicators across a range of freedoms for 165 jurisdictions…Not all countries deteriorated compared to 2000, the first year for which we have sufficient data. Taiwan (in 12th place) and Estonia (5th place) notably increased their level of freedom, for example.
Most countries, however, are becoming less free. Hong Kong has become much less free. In 2018, it ranked #3, and was one of the freest societies on earth, ranking well ahead of the U.S. Now, it ranks #46, well behind the U.S., as people in Hong Kong are arrested for peacefully expressing their opinions.
In 2021, the authors of the Human Freedom Index noted that since the Index was first published in 2008, 83 percent of the world’s population had seen freedom decline. Since then, human freedom has declined in 89.8 percent of the world’s population. In the last year measured, “the average human freedom rating for 165 jurisdictions fell slightly, from 6.79″ to “6.75.”
Reports on civil liberties such as the Human Freedom Index show a long‐term decline of global freedom of expression. After being relatively constant from 2001 to 2006, the global average of freedom of expression fell rapidly from 2006 to 2020.
The decline of free speech has been called a global free speech recession by free speech scholars such as Jacob Mchangama. The decline is broad-based and has occurred in both rich and poor countries (including those with longstanding democratic institutions) and in every region on Earth.
Public opposition to free speech has also risen, and hostility to free speech in the West is greatest among Generation Z. The belief that free speech is harmful to marginalized peoples has proliferated, as Mchangama and Greg Lukianoff have pointed out.
As Professor Eric Kaufmann notes, “The steady erosion of free speech values is generational. Today’s young people are far more censorious than those of 1980 or even 2000, and they won’t grow out of it. While Zoomers are scared of being cancelled, they accept this risk as part of their political ideology.” Over half of 18-25-year-olds say that “My fear of losing my job or reputation due to something I said or posted online is a justified price to pay to protect historically disadvantaged groups. “Surveys consistently find that ‘woke’ values are twice as prevalent among younger Leftists than among older Leftists. Young academics are twice as censorious as those over 50. These are the editorial teams and professoriate of tomorrow.”
Moreover, leading members of Generation Z support punishing people for expressing common viewpoints. “Over 8 in 10 undergraduates at 150 leading US colleges say speakers who say BLM is a hate group or transgenderism is a mental disorder should not be permitted to speak on campus. What’s more, 7 in 10 think a professor who says something that students find offensive should be reported to their university.”
Press freedom has been on a generation‐long decline in most of the world. The number of journalists imprisoned hit a record recently according to the Committee to Protect Journalists and in its annual survey, Reporters Without Borders concludes that “the environment for journalism is ‘bad’ in seven out of ten countries, and satisfactory in only three out of ten.”
