Freedom in the States

States that respect individual autonomy are more successful than those which do not, according to Drs. William Ruger and Jason Sorens, affiliated with the libertarian Mercatus Center think tank at George Mason University.In their report, Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom, Drs. Ruger and Sorens rank New Hampshire and South Dakota as the freest states and New York as the least free of the states.

On June 8, political scientist and journalist Michael Barone joined them at a policy forum hosted by the Cato Institute in Washington, DC to discuss their findings and the implications. Barone noted that even though the New Deal weakened the differences in policy between states under federalism, Americans still leave states that have poor public policies. Barone said that in fiscal policy but especially in cultural policy the states have considerable leeway to allow different levels of freedom.  Ruger and Sorens found evidence in their study that higher levels of freedom in the index brought higher economic growth and higher inward migration rates.

Both Barone, who noted that San Diego County, California had grown at less than the national average over the last ten years, and the co-authors gave evidence that the relation between freedom and higher population growth would hold even if the pleasantness of the climate were constant.

All the panelists remarked on the regional variation of the results.  Ruger noted that although he expected traditionally Democratic states to rate high in personal freedom and traditionally Republican states to rate high in economic freedom, regional variation eliminated this relationship.  Northeastern states rated poorly on both personal and economic freedom, while Mountain West states rated generally high in both categories.  In both categories the percentage of non-Democrats in a jurisdiction was generally correlated with higher freedom, although the relationship is much weaker in personal freedom.

Drs. Ruger and Sorens equally weight “personal freedom” and “economic freedom” to create the aggregate score.  Drs. Ruger and Sorens analyzed over 200 public policies and divided them into “paternalism,” “fiscal policy,” and “regulatory policy” categories.  The policies and categories were then weighted and an aggregate score of total freedom was developed.  The most important single policy areas in the index were taxation, spending, education, gun control, labor regulation, and healthcare regulation.

Michael Watson is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.

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