State of World Liberty Index
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The State of World Liberty Index is a ranking of countries according to the degree of economic and personal freedoms which their citizens enjoy; each country is given a score between 0 and 100. The Index defines freedom as "the ability for the individual to live their lives as they choose, as long as they do not infringe on the rights of others to do the same." Only one report (the 2006 State of World Liberty Index, released 12 August 2006) has yet been produced by the State of World Liberty Project, but the organization has stated that it will continue to release updated reports annually.[1] 159 countries were ranked in the 2006 report.
The index has been cited by human rights organisations,[2] governments,[3] pro-democracy groups,[4][5] news organisations,[6][7][8] and others.[9][10][11]
[edit] Methodology
The 2006 State of World Liberty Index was created by combining the rankings of four other indexes of world liberty into one: the “2005 Economic Freedom of the World” Index (Fraser Institute/Cato Institute), the “2006 Index of Economic Freedom” (The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal), the “2005 Freedom in the World” index (Freedom House), and the “2005 Press Freedom Index” (Reporters Without Borders). These reports are used to score countries in three categories: individual freedom, economic freedom, and government size and taxation. These three scores are then averaged to give a country's overall score.[12]
[edit] 2006 rankings
In the 2006 index, Estonia was ranked most free overall, with a score of 85.25; North Korea was last with a score of 6.80. Hong Kong was ranked most free in both the economic liberty category and the government size and taxation category, but a personal freedom score of only 61.74 greatly reduced its overall ranking. Thirty-five countries (22%) scored above 99 in the individual freedom category. The complete rankings can be viewed here.
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