[lbo-talk] the Heritage/WSJ Freedom index is meaningless

Thomas Brown browntf at HAL.LAMAR.EDU
Sun Mar 27 14:55:41 PST 2005


I agree in part with your criticism of how the index is

conceptualized, but I have a few questions.

Your tables don't specify the units of measurement. The "freedom

index" is a simple average of ten five-point Likert scores.

So why does your X axis read from zero to 140?

Also, according to the report's web site, low scores

represent "more freedom", so presumably you

inverted those scores before you charted the

correlation?

Also, what measurement, of the three you mentioned, are

you using for the Y axis? You seem to be arguing that

per capita PPP is the most appropriate measure. But

that is exactly what the report's authors used. See:

http://tinyurl.com/4bv45

I agree with your argument that the index year charted

should precede the GDP year charted. In the chart

linked above, he got that backwards, which

is a stupid mistake if he wants to argue causation.

On your second chart, I would comment that a correlation of

.33 is not so shabby for global social science. Considering that we

have a fairly small sample size and that the index is constructed rather

crudely, that correlation is probably underestimated. (Assuming of

course that one buys the index's validity, which is obviously not a given

in this discussion.)

If a variable can explain 10% of a social phenomenon, then

I would say that is a potentially useful variable that is worth

exploring. I still have questions about how the index is conceptualized,

so I'm not taking this finding at face value, but it might be

worth exploring to see if it can be improved on. It looks

like there might be more clustering at the low end of

your second table. It might be interesting to analyze

these countries as a separate group, to see if there

is anything distinctive about them that makes the

index variable more powerful in that situation.

Your article might benefit by quoting

this passage from the Heritage author's finding that

the US is "less free" during the Bush administration

than it was under Clinton::

"More interesting than the drop is the cause of the U.S. decline. In part,

it is a slight worsening of the country's score since the turn of the century.

The free-spending habits of a government where one party controls both

Congress and the White House contributed to this decline."

I would also suggest dropping your closing paragraph. It would be foolish

to suggest that the factors in the index are "meaningless", or that everyone

on the right doesn't try to make sense. At best, you can argue with how

the index is constructed and what it means. To go beyond that is

demagoguery. Right now we have far too much of that on both

sides of the political spectrum.

Thomas



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