Countries with larger government sectors tend to have more personal freedom
By Ed Dolan – The Human Freedom Index consists of two parts. One is the Economic Freedom Index (EFI) from the Fraser Institute, which includes measures of the size of government, protection of property rights, sound money, freedom of international trade, and regulation.
The other is Cato’s own Personal Freedom Index (PFI), which includes measures of rule of law, freedom of movement and assembly, personal safety and security, freedom of information, and freedom of personal relationships. The Cato and Fraser links provide detailed descriptions of the two indexes.
In order to explore the way freedom influences other aspects of human well-being, I will draw on a third data set, the Legatum Prosperity Index (LPI) from the Legatum Institute. The LPI includes data on nine “pillars” of prosperity, including the economy, business environment, governance, personal freedom, health, safety and security, education, social capital, and environmental quality.
The relationship between economic and personal freedom is partly explained by the fact that both are positively associated with income. As the next chart shows, that relationship is nonlinear for both measures of freedom. The log of real GDP per capita, expressed in U.S. dollars at purchasing power parity, provides a reasonably good fit.
There are many measures of prosperity and well-being available. I hope to be able to explore several of them and their relationships to human freedom in future posts. In this introductory treatment, however, I will limit myself to the education, health, and personal security indicators from the Legatum Prosperity Index. In what follows, I will refer to the average of these three Legatum “pillars” as the education-health-safety index, or EHS, measured on a scale of 1 to 100. more>
By George J. Stigler – The denunciation of American complacency, however, is not my purpose, at least not my explicit purpose. I admire the humane and generous sympathies of our society—sympathies that extend to the uneducated and the uncultured and the unenterprising and even the immoral as well as to the educated and the cultured and the enterprising and the moral.
By Chana R. Schoenberger – For nearly 50 years, many have been guided by the idea, laid out most famously by Milton Friedman, that the most appropriate way to create social change is to give profits to investors, and taxes to the government, and use that money to make an impact. For just as long, other investors have argued in favor of divesting from companies to make a political or social point—dumping shares of gun manufacturers or fossil fuel companies, for example. 
By Alice G. Walton – Charities that encourage people to donate “just dollars a day” may have the right idea—and more businesses should consider following suit. University of Rhode Island’s 
By Alyssa Coppelman – Milad Safabakhsh began photographing six years ago, coming to it “accidentally,” he says. While studying graphic design in university, he started playing around with a phone camera and sharing the results on Facebook. He submitted images to a Facebook page on minimalism, and one of them was featured. Another Facebook photography page selected one of his images as a pick of the week, and he decided to pursue photography more seriously.
