New Hampshire Is The Freest State In The Nation According To The Cato Institute Rankings

Live free or die indeed. Every year the Cato Institute analyzes a number of variables to determine which state is the freest in the nation, and this year the Granite State tops the list. That's right, according to the Cato Institute, New Hampshire is the freest state in the nation.

These guys look at a lot of factors, way too many to list here, it's quite impressive actually, I believe they analyze over 230 variables to get their rankings. All of the variables fall into 1 of 3 categories. Fiscal Policy, Regulatory Policy and Personal Freedom. Each factor is weighted differently.

You can check out the results on this nifty map they created, just scroll over each state to reveal the ranking.

As I said before, the state motto apparently rings true as New Hampshire ranks number 1 as the freest state in the nation.

Here is the list:

A cool feature to this study is that you can use their 'Freedom Calculator' to enter in the factors you find most important and use that information to determine where you want to live.