Global Corruption Barometer

Corruption is one of my favourite topics on this blog, so I thought I would share this great resource with you. It's a pity the data from Russia and Brazil is so unreliable; it would be very interesting to see where they place.

From Wikipedia, 

The Global Corruption Barometer published by Transparency International is the largest survey in the world tracking public opinion on corruption. It surveys 114,000 people in 107 countries on their view of corruption.

Have you paid a bribe in 2013?

People in 95 countries have been surveyed whether they have paid a bribe to a public body during the last year; for a small number of countries, including Brazil and Russia, data on particular questions has been excluded because of concerns about validity and reliability. The margin of error for each country is 3%. The typical sample size is 1,000 people. Four countries - Cyprus, Luxembourg, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands - have a sample size of 500 people and a margin of error of 4%.

Unlike the other similar Corruption Perception Index published by Transparency International, this is a survey directly asking the population instead of using "perceived expert opinions", which is liable to substantial bias and has been under criticism as such. In a 2013 article in Foreign Policy, Alex Cobham argued that the CPI embeds a powerful and misleading elite bias in popular perceptions of corruption, potentially contributing to a vicious cycle and at the same time incentivizing inappropriate policy responses. Cobham resumes: "the index corrupts perceptions to the extent that it's hard to see a justification for its continuing publication."

Note: 9 of the top 10 countries are African. That should not be a surprise to anyone.

Rank	Country/Territory	% of people who paid bribes[3]
1	Australia	1
2	Denmark	1
3	Finland	1
4	Japan	1
5	Spain	2
6	Canada	3
7	South Korea	3
8	Malaysia	3
9	Maldives	3
10	New Zealand	3
11	Norway	3
12	Uruguay	3
13	Portugal	3
14	Belgium	4
15	Croatia	4
16	Georgia	4
17	Italy	5
18	United Kingdom	5
19	Estonia	6
20	Slovenia	6
21	Switzerland	7
22	United States	7
23	Bulgaria	8
24	Chile	10
25	El Salvador	12
26	Hungary	12
27	Israel	12
28	Palestine	12
29	Jamaica	12
30	Philippines	12
31	Argentina	13
32	Rwanda       17	13
33	Vanuatu	13
34	Czech Republic	15
35	Kosovo	16
36	Macedonia	17
37	Romania	17
38	Sudan	17
39	Armenia	18
40	Thailand	18
41	Tunisia	18
42	Cyprus	19
43	Latvia	19
44	Sri Lanka	19
45	Peru	20
46	Slovakia	21
47	Turkey	21
48	Colombia	22
49	Greece	22
50	Paraguay	25
51	Lithuania	26
52	Serbia	26
53	Papua New Guinea	27
54	Venezuela	27
55	Bosnia and Herzegovina	28
56	Madagascar 10	28
57	Iraq	29
58	Moldova	29
59	Vietnam	30
60	Nepal	31
61	Mexico	33
62	Kazakhstan	34
63	Pakistan	34
64	Solomon Islands                 22	34
65	Bolivia	36
66	Egypt	36
67	Indonesia	36
68	Taiwan	36
69	Ukraine	37
70	Jordan	37
71	Bangladesh	39
72	South Sudan	39
73	Algeria	41
74	Nigeria	44
75	Ethiopia       15	44
76	Mongolia	45
77	Kyrgyzstan	45
78	Afghanistan 24	46
79	Democratic Republic of the   Congo                   2	46
80	South Africa	47
81	Morocco	49
82	India	54
83	Ghana	54
84	Tanzania     25	56
85	Cambodia	57
86	Senegal	57
87	Uganda       19	61
88	Cameroon	62
89	Libya	62
90	Zimbabwe	62
91	Mozambique 7	62
92	Kenya	70
93	Yemen	74
94	Liberia           4	75
95	Sierra Leone	84

I have inserted the ranking of the 25 poorest countries in the world just to compare poverty levels with corruption. The numbers can be found in to column with the country's name. Unfortunately, 15 of the 15 did not make it to the list, probably because of a lack of data or a distrust of the data as with Brazil and Russia. 

Continent - Country Poverty ranking 

A = Africa

A - Benin    23

A - Gambia 21

C - Haiti      20

A - Burkina Faso  18

A - Comoros         16

O - Kiribati           14

A - Mali                13

A - Togo               12

A - Guinea-Bissau 11

A - Guinea             9

A - Eritrea             8

A - Niger               6

A - Burundi           5

A - Malawi            3

A - Central African Republic 1

So 21 of the poorest 25 countries in the world are African. 2 from the South Pacific and one each from the Caribbean and Asia.

I have little doubt that the 15 countries which didn't make it onto the list should be there, and that were they not rampant with corruption, they might possibly work their way off the list of the 25 most impoverished countries in the world. 

Kudos to Rwanda. I don't know why they have such a relatively low corruption rating, but they put all other African countries to shame.