Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - The Kingdom ranked 78th at the global level and first among the Arab countries in the newly released Human Freedom Index (HFI).
The index is co-published by the Fraser Institute, the Liberals Institute at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the Cato Institute and presented a broad measures of human freedom around the world.
According to the HFI, Jordan topped the list among Arab countries and ranked 78th at the global level, followed by Lebanon 87th, Bahrain 89th, Kuwait 97th and Oman112th.
The top 10 jurisdictions in order were Hong Kong, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Sweden. The United States is ranked in 20th place. Other countries rank as follows: Germany (12), Chile (18), Japan (28), France (33), Singapore (43), South Africa (70), India (75), Brazil (82), Russia (111), China (132), Nigeria (139), Saudi Arabia (141), Venezuela (144), Zimbabwe (149), and Iran (152).
The HFI is the most comprehensive freedom index so far created for a globally meaningful set of countries. It covers 152 countries for 2012, the most recent year for which sufficient data is available. The index ranks countries beginning in 2008, the earliest year for which a robust enough index could be produced.
The findings in the report showed that freedom plays an important role in human well-being, and they offer opportunities for further research into the complex ways in which freedom influences, and can be influenced by political regimes, economic development, and the whole range of indicators of human well-being.