Methodology

How the ranking works

Liberty Moving measures physical liberty: the freedom to lead a long, safe, and self-directed life in a place. Every one of 3,144 counties gets a score from 0 to 10 on each of eleven factors. The factors combine into one composite through the publisher's own weighting, which is proprietary and not published. The composite sets the rank. Two factors are measured at the state level, nine at the county level. Ties share a rank.

Some statistics carry others inside them. Life expectancy, for example, already reflects traffic deaths, so the ranking does not count car accidents separately.

Government behavior

Five factors on what government takes and restricts: economic freedom, gun rights, sales tax, property tax, and how the county votes.

  1. Fraser Institute state rankingstate-level
  2. 2Astate-level
  3. GOP + LP vote for Presidentcounty-level
  4. Sales taxcounty-level
  5. Property taxcounty-level

Environment

Two factors on physical conditions: air quality and flood or hurricane exposure.

  1. Air qualitycounty-level
  2. Floods / hurricanescounty-level

Private behavior

Four factors on how people live: homicide, life expectancy, government employment, and single-parent households.

  1. Homicide ratecounty-level
  2. Life expectancycounty-level
  3. Government employeescounty-level
  4. Single-parent householdscounty-level

What it leaves out

Weather, because people already know it and attitudes to it are personal. Cost of living, because it depends on much more than government and is well covered elsewhere.

Estimated values

A few counties have no published value for a factor: small Alaska boroughs and Hawaii's Kalawao County have no air monitor, Connecticut's planning regions have no homicide series, and some counties are too small for a life-expectancy estimate. Where an official number exists for a larger area that contains the county, or can be derived from adjacent counties by a documented method, the site uses it and marks the factor est. on the county page. The generated description skips those factors. Every such value is listed with its method in the project's data notes, and we replace it when a published value appears.

Beta

This is a beta. We check the data county by county and the ranks can move. If a number for your county looks wrong, tell us and include the source you trust.

Data and agents

The whole ranking is free to download as CSV orJSON: every county, all eleven scores, the composite, the rank and the estimated-value flags. Every county page has a Markdown twin at /counties/{fips}.md, and/llms.txt gives AI agents a map of the site. Quote the site with a link to the county page and the model version below.

Model version

v4 — beta, 30 October 2026, sourced values. Published October 30, 2026.

The Explore page lets you weigh the same eleven scores your own way, starting from equal weights. That ranking is yours. The official rank stays visible beside it.