Who Lives Free? A Population-Weighted View

By country count, the democratic recession looks bad. By population, it looks catastrophic. China alone accounts for 1.4 billion people living under deep autocracy. Add India's slide toward the Event Horizon and the picture inverts entirely: the majority of humanity now lives in partly free or not free states.
71%
World pop. not free
15%
Partly free
14%
Free
5.7B
Not free (people)
1.1B
Free (people)
Not Free (L < 40)
5.7B
71% of world population
China 1.43B · India 1.43B* · Pakistan 240M
Bangladesh 173M · Russia 144M · Iran 89M
*India at 62 — partly free but approaching Event Horizon
Partly Free (40–69)
1.2B
15% of world population
Indonesia 277M · Mexico 130M · US 335M
Philippines 117M · Colombia 52M
Argentina 46M · Ukraine 37M
Free (L ≥ 70)
1.1B
14% of world population
EU core 350M · Japan 124M · Brazil 217M
South Korea 52M · Canada 40M · Australia 26M
Taiwan 24M · Chile 20M · Uruguay 3.5M
Each square = ~80 million people — how the world's 8 billion divide
Top 20 countries by population — coloured by Liberty score
The tyranny of arithmetic. Democracies outnumber autocracies by country count. But autocracies outweigh democracies by population nearly 5 to 1. China and India together account for 2.9 billion people — 36% of humanity — and both sit below or near the Event Horizon. If India crosses it, 85% of the world's population will live in "Partly Free" or "Not Free" states.
METHODOLOGY NOTE: The PTI score of L≈48 reflects the author's real-time institutional assessment incorporating executive action pace through early 2026. Published indices score the US higher: Freedom House 83/100 (2024 report), V-Dem LDI ≈0.65–0.72 (scaled: ~65–72). The divergence reflects the PTI's faster update cycle, weighting toward institutional constraint erosion, and incorporation of events post-dating published index coverage. All claims should be evaluated under both the author's PTI and established indices.