Transparency International's 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index is now out. The top of the list (the least corrupt) is dominated by northwestern European countries and their offspring. (Singapore's high rating is mostly testimony to Lee Kuan Yew.) America's 7.6 score is rather embarrassing.

Country rank	Country	2005 CPI score*	Confidence range**	Surveys used***
1	Iceland	9.7	9.5 - 9.7	8
2	Finland	9.6	9.5 - 9.7	9
	New Zealand	9.6	9.5 - 9.7	9
4	Denmark	9.5	9.3 - 9.6	10
5	Singapore	9.4	9.3 - 9.5	12
6	Sweden	9.2	9.0 - 9.3	10
7	Switzerland	9.1	8.9 - 9.2	9
8	Norway	8.9	8.5 - 9.1	9
9	Australia	8.8	8.4 - 9.1	13
10	Austria	8.7	8.4 - 9.0	9
11	Netherlands	8.6	8.3 - 8.9	9
	United Kingdom	8.6	8.3 - 8.8	11
13	Luxembourg	8.5	8.1 - 8.9	8
14	Canada	8.4	7.9 - 8.8	11
15	Hong Kong	8.3	7.7 - 8.7	12
16	Germany	8.2	7.9 - 8.5	10
17	USA	7.6	7.0 - 8.0	12
18	France	7.5	7.0 - 7.8	11

At the bottom of the list are a lot of places where you don't want to live, visit, do business with, or even think about:

151	Angola	2.0	1.8 - 2.1	5
152	Cote d'Ivoire	1.9	1.7 - 2.1	4
	Equatorial Guinea	1.9	1.6 - 2.1	3
	Nigeria	1.9	1.7 - 2.0	9
155	Haiti	1.8	1.5 - 2.1	4
	Myanmar	1.8	1.7 - 2.0	4
	Turkmenistan	1.8	1.7 - 2.0	4
158	Bangladesh	1.7	1.4 - 2.0	7
	Chad	1.7	1.3 - 2.1	6

This database offers a rich opportunity for running correlations. (Here are 47 ranked tables from the CIA World Factbook.) There's obviously a positive correlation between lack of corruption and the absolute value of latitude (you could take the latitude of the capital of each country if you wanted to run calculation). I'd also be interested in the correlation between corruption and cousin marriage rates. Ethnic homogeneity seems to help, as does Protestantism. And if you want to correlate corruption with IQ, you can find all of Lynn and Vanhanen's statistics here.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer