2010 Index of Economic Freedom

The Heritage Foundation has released the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom.

The Heritage Foundation is a large public policy research organization which seeks “to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.” For more than a decade, the Foundation, in conjunction with the Wall Street Journal, has published the international Index of Economic Freedom, which is intended to track the state of economic freedom on a global basis.

For purposes of scoring individual nations, the index measures “ten components of economic freedom [business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, government spending, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, property rights, freedom from corruption, and labor freedom], assigning a grade in each using a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 represents the maximum freedom. The ten component scores are then averaged to give an overall economic freedom score for each country.”

These measures are, then, collectively intended to quantify Economic Freedom, which the Foundation defines as “the fundamental right of every human to control his or her own labor and property. In an economically free society, individuals are free to work, produce, consume, and invest in any way they please, with that freedom both protected by the state and unconstrained by the state. In economically free societies, governments allow labor, capital and goods to move freely, and refrain from coercion or constraint of liberty beyond the extent necessary to protect and maintain liberty itself.”

In this year’s ranking the United States ranks 8th, behind Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Switzerland and Canada.

For a complete listing of the 183 countries and their respective scores, in rank order, see Ranking the Countries. For a global map summarizing the country scores graphically, see Distribution of Economic Freedom. For an eight-page précis of the most salient points of the study, see Executive Highlights. To download a copy of the full 486-page report, see this page.

Reading Skills in Children — The Role of Environment

Environment is no less crucial than genetics in developing children’s reading skills, according to a new study appearing in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and summarized recently by Science Daily:

“Environmental factors include everything the children experience — how they are cared for by their parents, how much they are read to, the neighborhood they live in, nutrition and their instruction in schools, among other factors.

“The findings showed that when children start out reading, both genetics and environment play a role in readings skills, depending on the skills assessed. For word and letter identification, genetics explained about one-third of the test results, while environment explained two-thirds. For vocabulary and sound awareness, it was equally split between genetics and environment. For the speed tests, it was three-quarters genetic.

“But when the researchers measured growth in reading skills, environment became much more important, [Ohio State University Professor of Human Development & Family Science Stephen] Petrill said.

“For reading skills that are taught, such as words and letters, the environment is almost completely responsible for growth. For awareness of sounds in reading, about 80 percent of growth was explained by the environment. Speed measures were the only ones where genetics still played a large role.

“‘Regardless of where children start as far as reading skills, and the impact that genetics and environment had on their initial skills, we found that their environment had an impact in how fast or how slowly those reading skills developed,’ Petrill said.”

Global Warming and Glacial Melting Update

In a brief statement, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirmed the substance of the report on the melting of Himalayan glaciers we noted yesterday, and declared that “it has . . . recently come to our attention that a paragraph in the 938 page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.

“The Chair, Vice-Chairs, and Co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance. This episode demonstrates that the quality of the assessment depends on absolute adherence to the IPCC standards, including thorough review of ‘the quality and validity of each source before incorporating results from the source into an IPCC Report’. We reaffirm our strong commitment to ensuring this level of performance.”

Scientific American also provides a quick podcast on melting of the Himalayan glaciers and the controversy reported.

The Knight Science Journalism Tracker includes a host of useful links for those interested in pursuing this topic in this post.