How free is your state?

Two political science educators have published "Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom" and they rank Arkansas 29th among the states.

The authors are William P. Ruger and Jason Sorens.

Ruger is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas State University. He is on military leave, serving in the U.S. Navy in Afghanistan. Ruger earned his PhD in politics from Brandeis University and an AB from the College of William and Mary.

Sorens is an assistant professor of Political Science at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. He received his doctorate in political science in 2003 from Yale University, and his research focuses on secessionism, ethnic politics, and comparative federalism. His work has also appeared in

Regional and Federal Studies, Comparative Political Studies, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, and State Politics and Policy Quarterly.

Here are some of their conclusions:

We find that the freest states in the country are New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota, which together achieve a virtual tie for first place. All three states feature low taxes and government spending and middling levels of regulation and paternalism.

New York is the least free by a considerable margin, followed by New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and Maryland. On personal freedom alone, Alaska is the clear winner, while Maryland brings up the rear. As for freedom in the different regions of the country, the Mountain and West North Central regions are the freest overall while the Middle Atlantic lags far behind on both economic and personal freedom.

Regression analysis demonstrates that states enjoying more economic and personal freedom tend to attract substantially higher rates of internal net migration.

Arkansas is #29 in our index, doing much better on personal (4th among the 50 states) than economic freedom (39th). Arkansas does surprisingly well on fiscal policy (33rd) for a poor, smallish state, once one adjusts for federal grants.
However, the state could stand to do much better on fiscal decentralization and local government budget constraints for a state with strong counties.
Local governments should be allowed more revenue sources and state grants to local governments should be reduced. Arkansas scores high on motorist freedoms, with only secondary seat-belt enforcement, no helmet laws for adults, no open-container law, and no personal injury insurance requirement. Arkansas has virtually no regulation of private schools, and the homeschooling laws are better than average, although parental notification requirements can be onerous (annual, extensive materials). Arkansas has jumped onto the smoking ban bandwagon. The state could significantly improve its regulatory environment (44th) by repealing its health insurance mandates, which add an estimated 53 percent to the cost of premiums.40 The state licenses 30 of the occupations we track, tied for first (worst) with Maine. As of the end of 2006, the state had made no eminent domain reforms of note. On the other hand, state-level land use  planning is virtually nonexistent.

Here is the complete list:

1	New Hampshire
2	Colorado
3	South Dakota
4	Idaho
5	Texas
6	Missouri
7	Tennessee
8	Arizona
9	Virginia
10	North Dakota
11	Utah
12	Kansas
13	Indiana
14	Michigan
15	Wyoming
16	Iowa
17	Georgia
18	Oklahoma
19	Montana
20	Pennsylvania
21	Alabama
22	Florida
23	North Carolina
24	Nevada
25	Mississippi
26	Delaware
27	Oregon
28	Nebraska
29	Arkansas
30	South Carolina
31	Alaska
32	Kentucky
33	West Virginia
34	Louisiana
35	Minnesota
36	New Mexico
37	Wisconsin
38	Ohio
39	Maine
40	Vermont
41	Connecticut
42	Illinois
43	Massachusetts
44	Washington
45	Hawaii
46	Maryland
47	California
48	Rhode Island
49	New Jersey
50	New York

 

You can read the whole thing here.