2026 Freedom and Prosperity Indexes

What It Is: The Atlantic Council's annual index ranking 171 countries on political freedom, economic freedom, and rule of law (the Freedom Index) alongside income, health, education, environment, and inclusion (the Prosperity Index), using thirty years of data from 1995 to 2025. 

Why It Matters: This year's headline finding is that the rule of law itself is now eroding, not just political freedom — the global Legal Subindex has declined by over a point since 2020, with the US declining from 81.2 to 69.8 since 2014. . Notably, the data shows that rule of law correlates most sharply with prosperity. Having this concrete data can help companies weigh systemic interests more accurately in their public affairs priorities. 

How to Use It: Use the interactive country-profiles rankings to view the US-specific trend line alongside markets where your company operates. against thirty years of rule-of-law, political freedom, and economic freedom data — useful for enterprise risk assessments, issue prioritization, board-level briefings on geopolitical exposure, and crisis readiness.