Measuring Economic Freedom

There are many icons of freedom. recent history includes Smith, Henry, Locke, Hayek, King, Friedman, and many more. Our goal here has been to assay and measure the impact these people have had on liberty as one walks around the American landscape. We have accumulated a large number of measures of liberty as they vary across the States of the US. These have been used to form an index of freedom for each state and thus a ranking of freedom by state. We do not believe that this work is complete. There are many ways to define and measure freedom, and we have surely not covered them all. We hope our work here inspires others to dig deeper into the questions we have left unanswered.

The State Freedom Index Project was the brainchild of Thomas A. Roe of Greenville, SC. Widely known for his love of liberty and his unstinting efforts to assist the development of state policy shops in all 50 states, Tom Roe provided the funds and inspiration for the project. The report's production and dissemination was coordinated by the State Policy Network, which is directed by Byron Lamm. We express our deepest appreciation for their support, but we must bear full responsibility for the final product.