From the Cato Institute’s blog announcing the release of the 2019 Human Freedom Index,
The United States ranks 15 in the Human Freedom Index 2019 released today by the Cato Institute, the Fraser Institute in Canada, and the Liberales Institut at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom in Germany. The five freest jurisdictions are New Zealand, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Canada, and Australia.
The annual Index uses 76 indicators of personal, civil, and economic freedom in 162 countries for 2017, the most recent year for which sufficient, globally comparable data are available. The report finds that global freedom has declined slightly since 2008, with more countries (79) seeing a fall in their levels of freedom than seeing an improvement (61).