---
title: "Chart of the Week: The wide world of bribery"
description: "Every year, Transparency International asks people around the world about their experiences with public corruption — more than 114,000 in 107 countries for their latest “Global Corruption Barometer.” The map below depicts the percentage of people in each of the surveyed countries who reported paying a bribe sometime in the past 12 months to any […]"
date: "2013-07-12"
authors:
  - name: "Drew DeSilver"
    job_title: "Senior Writer/Editor"
    link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/drew-desilver/"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/07/12/chart-of-the-week-the-wide-world-of-bribery/"
---

# Chart of the Week: The wide world of bribery

Every year, Transparency International asks people around the world about their experiences with public corruption -- more than 114,000 in 107 countries for their latest "[Global Corruption Barometer](http://www.transparency.org/gcb2013/results)." The map below depicts the percentage of people in each of the surveyed countries who reported paying a bribe sometime in the past 12 months to any of eight public services; the scale runs from green (lowest) to red (highest).

[![](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2013/11/gasoline_prices.png?w=192)](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2013/11/gasoline_prices.png)

[![Percentage of respondents in each country who paid a bribe in the past 12 months (Source: Transparency International)](https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2013/07/bribery-map.png)](http://www.transparency.org/gcb2013/results)
*Percentage of respondents in each country who paid a bribe in the past 12 months (Source: Transparency International)*

The survey found that 84% of people in Sierra Leone reported paying bribes. The United States came in at a respectable 7%, but at the very bottom (or top, perhaps) were Australia, Denmark, Finland and Japan, where just 1% in each country reported paying bribes. (One reason we liked Transparency's map is because, by clicking on each country, you can get the percentage of self-reported bribers. The same website also has other [interactive corruption-related maps](http://www.transparency.org/gcb2013).)

It's interesting to compare the Transparency International results with Ernst & Young's [latest survey of business fraud](http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Navigating_todays_complex_business_risks/%24FILE/Navigating_todays_complex_business_risks.pdf) in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa. While corruption perceptions in some countries are quite similar in the two surveys, they vary dramatically in others. For instance, 96% of Slovenian respondents in the Ernst & Young survey said that bribery and corruption were widespread in their country. But in the Transparency survey, only 6% of Slovenians said they themselves had paid a bribe in the past 12 months.