the freedom to interact with people, to converse with people, to travel where we want, to say

the things we want to say. These things [that] involve interaction with others are truly

at the core of economic freedom.

There’s a tremendous body of evidence that suggests that economic freedom is associated

with many of the things we think of when we think of a healthy society. We can look at

the Economic Freedom of North America Index. States with more economic freedom have higher

growth rates of the economy, they have lower unemployment rates, they have less debt per

GDP than states that are less free.

All of these things we associate with economic health are also associated with economic freedom,

but we see the same phenomenon when we compare countries of the world. The most economically

free countries have GDPs per capita that are about 10 times the size of less economically

free countries.

One might argue that what we’re seeing is the big country effect. That is, big countries

will tend to be economically free, and they’ll also tend to have high GDP per capita. But

if we restrict our vision to just the poorest 20 percent of countries, the poor countries

that have the most economic freedom have GDP per capita that are 50 percent greater than

the poor countries that have less economic freedom.

One counterargument is that GDP per capita only measures average income. It’s possible

that you could have a country with a small number of elite, rich people and a large number

of destitute people. But if we examine inequality measures, what we find is that the countries

that are more economically free also have more equitable income distributions. That

is, economic freedom is not only associated with higher income levels on average, but

it’s also associated with a more equitable income distribution.

Skeptics might argue that economic freedom achieves greater income because of exploitation,

exploitation of people and exploitation of the environment. Let’s look at the data

and see if this is the case. On average, women in economically free countries have more gender

equality than women in economically less-free countries. Also, child-labor rates tend to

be lower in economically free countries and higher in economically unfree countries.

One might argue that child-labor rates are lower in economically free countries because

economically free countries are richer and therefore can import products from poor countries

that do not have child-labor laws. In effect, the rich countries encourage the poor countries

to exploit their children so the rich countries don’t have to exploit theirs.

But if we look at the poorest countries, we see the same phenomenon. Even amongst the

poorest countries, those with more economic freedom have lower child-labor rates than

those with less economic freedom.

Economic freedom also accompanies reduced exploitation of the environment. For example,

deforestation is worst amongst the least economically free countries. Meanwhile the most economically

free countries actually experience reforestation: Their forests are growing.

Economic freedom is about the freedom to act. The more freedom we have to act, the more

able we are to do the things we want to do: to create wealth, to protect the environment,

to help people be equal across genders, to help children no longer have to work in factories.

It’s about being free to make your own choices and to live with the consequences of those

choices, provided that you do not violate anyone else’s freedom. The more economic

freedom we have, the more able we are to make the world a better place.