The Freedom Development Index 2024

Giving thanks

I have updated the Freedom Development Index with the latest data available, from 2024 and 2025. Information is available for 164 countries. The most prominent countries missing from the list are Afghanistan, Cuba, Eritrea, North Korea, South Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

The index employs five components:

• the Human Freedom Index from the Cato Institute, measuring personal freedom and economic freedom

• the Human Development Index from the United Nations, measuring life expectancy, educational level, and per capita income (adjusted for purchasing power parity)

• the intentional death rate, combining homicides and suicides (lower is better)

• the debt-to-GDP ratio (lower is better)

• the rate of population change (stable is better)

The results are displayed in the map below. The highest quality of life is shown in yellow, with the lowest in dark blue.

Here are the best performing countries, grouped by grades, from highest to lowest.

A+: none

A: Denmark, Switzerland, Taiwan

A-: Ireland, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, Iceland, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Luxembourg, Czechia, Malta, Finland

B+: United Kingdom, Estonia, Austria, Cyprus, Canada, Spain, Hong Kong, Portugal, Slovenia, Belgium

B: South Korea, Italy, Slovakia, United States, Chile, France, Latvia, Croatia, Poland, Greenland, Lithuania

B-: Israel, Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, Armenia, Albania, Seychelles, Singapore, Costa Rica, Montenegro, Uruguay, Hungary, Panama

C+: Macedonia, Greece, Peru, Barbados, Mauritius, Serbia, Japan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, United Arab Emirates, Argentina

America is dragged down by its murder rate; Greenland is dragged down by its suicide rate; Japan is dragged down by its high debt. (The index is designed in such a way that poor scores in even one component drag down the overall score. To get a high grade, a country must perform well across all components.)

The lowest scoring countries are either majority Muslim, or they are in Africa, or they are current or recovering communist countries (some of which do well and others do not).

A glance at the map explains global migration patterns. The most desirable countries are:

• all European countries west of the former Soviet Union, plus the Baltic states

• the principal Anglophone countries (America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand)

• the tigers of east Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore)

• some stars in Latin America (Chile, Costa Rica)

• the western Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia)

• Israel

The most desirable countries largely coincide with Western civilization, which largely coincides with the intersection of the Judeo-Christian world with the European language families, excluding the Orthodox east and Latin America.

Most readers of this Substack are fortunate to be living in this part of the world. Many of our countries are under constant attack from migrants from other parts of the world, people who have chosen not to assimilate to our culture but rather to maintain the destructive patterns of behavior typical of the places they fled. Many of them seek to drag down their new culture to match the dysfunction to which they are accustomed, and are willing to kill to succeed.

This topic can be expected to dominate political discussion for the next decade. The choice our societies make will determine whether they flourish or are destroyed.