When most people think about the relative amount of freedom they are permitted in the different states, they will focus on one or two policy areas. Debates over which state is the “most free” devolve into an argument where one person is primarily considering sales tax, another might be relying on differences in gun laws, and a third is thinking only about victimless crimes.
As with most political discussions today, they will be talking past one another, their individual focuses on a few proxies that they think stand-in for what they are really concerned about — one’s overall ability to live as a free man in any particular state.
This week, the Cato Institute released its latest (“2021”) edition of its acclaimed “Freedom in the 50 States” [Footnote]. This extensive survey collects and compares over 230 policy variables that affect one’s ability to live your life as you choose, rather than as your rulers choose. They collected these 230+ policy variables for all 50 states across 20 years (2000-2019). That made their database 230,000 data points, which, you can imagine, gives us all a far richer insight into which states hold our freedoms dear.
The variables cover “from taxation to debt, from eminent domain to occupational licensing, and from drug policy to educational choice”. For ease of discussion, the researchers grouped the 230+ policy areas into multiple categories, and then again into three meta categories:
* Fiscal Policy
* Regulatory Policy
* Personal Freedom
Finally, they standardized, weighted, and combine all 230+ variables into a single overall Freedom index for each state, which allows us to rank all the states by overall freedom. In this way, we can better answer the age-old tavern question, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the freest of them all?”
The details about how the Granite State leads or falls behind other states across various aspects of human freedom are fascinating: I hope to share a few of them with you in future writeups. But let’s face it: you’re here for the bragging rights.
Which, of course, you already know!
The overall winner, the first in the nation for human freedom, the freest state of the 50 states, is yet again our beloved Granite State, New Hampshire!
Live Free or Die, baby!
1. New Hampshire
2. Florida
3. Nevada
4. Tennessee
5. South Dakota
Through 2000-2010, New Hampshire ranked second in the nation on freedom. Nevada was #1 across 2000-2006, largely due to its higher Personal Freedom. South Dakota was #1 across 2007-2010, largely due to its higher Economic Freedom.
New Hampshire captured the #1 spot for the first time in 2011 and did not relinquish it until 2015 when we lost it to Florida due to Florida’s superior Fiscal Policy score. We regained our rightful #1 spot in 2016, and this week we have learned that our winning streak was extended through 2019!
Florida, Nevada, Tennessee, and South Dakota are closest to us, in that order. Our biggest advantage against these more oppressed states is in Personal Freedom — demonstrated especially by variables like incarceration rates, drug arrests, nondrug victimless crime arrests, asset forfeiture reform, educational freedom, and gun rights. Our lead in this Personal Freedom area allowed us to beat all but Nevada. It was our showing on the Fiscal Policy grouping — including our state taxes, government debt, government consumption, and government employment — that helped us beat Nevada.
On the cautionary side, our freedom in New Hampshire is most imperiled by the Regulatory Policy grouping. The study highlighted our costs and retardation from NH policies like exclusionary zoning, regulatory takings, absence of a right-to-work law, workers’ compensation mandate, health mandates, and cable monopolies.
Cato emphasized our “New Hampshire Advantage — our stark contrast with the other states in New England whose citizens are far more oppressed.
It concluded on a promising note, “It could be a challenge for rivals to catch New Hampshire next time because of [pro-freedom] policy changes in 2021, including tax cuts and the passage of the education freedom accounts program.”
The bottom line is that, while there are still plenty of policy areas where we can significantly reduce increase our freedoms by reducing state oppression, we are quite safe bragging about the overall freedom we enjoy in the Granite State.
You may download the 100+ page PDF explaining the method and results of the study for free.
You may also download the actual spreadsheets that contain the variables and their weights, reweighting the variables to better match your policy preferences.
Footnote: The large amount of data and analyses requires a long lead time. Thus, the just-released “2021 Edition” includes data only through 2019. Policy changes that have taken place in 2020 or 2021 are not reflected in this 2021 edition. (For example, many states have imposed quite a wide range of violations of human rights to mitigate (arguably ineffectively) the spread of CoVid19. Those policies, because they took place in 2020 and 2021, were not collected nor analyzed in time for this 2021 edition.)
Dennis Pratt is a liberty lover living in Dover. In a previous life, he was a research scientist and thus loves exploring big databases.