16 January, 2008

The 2008 Index of Economic Freedom…

... is out now. Find India:

I’ve taken the table from Mary Anastasia O’Grady’s comment in the Wall Street Journal, in which she explains:

[T]he evidence is piling up that neither government nor multilateral spending on education and infrastructure are key to development. To move out of poverty, countries instead need fast growth; and to get that they need to unleash the animal spirits of entrepreneurs.

[...]

The nearby table shows the 2008 rankings but doesn’t tell the whole story. The Index also reports that the freest 20% of the world’s economies have twice the per capita income of those in the second quintile and five times that of the least-free 20%. In other words, freedom and prosperity are highly correlated.

It really is no surprise why India is still a poor country, is it?

(O’Grady link via Cafe Hayek.)