Data: Religiosity and corruption

This interesting new study of between 76 and 179 countries (it varies by the model estimated) finds that more religious countries are more corrupt. I'm skeptical of their interpretation. They admit the finding is counterintuitive but claim that either religion is the "opiate of the people" so they don't care and are oblivious to corruption, or the corruption drives them to escape in religion (the latter seems more likely). I suspect that race/ethnicity is driving the correlation. For example, Scandinavian people are less religious and less corrupt, while Latin Americans tend to be the opposite. Plus, it's always dicey to draw conclusions about individuals from aggregate-level data.

Let's use individual-level data from the General Social Survey. We'll narrow the ethnic variation by keep the sample large by focusing on whites. Here are the results:

People who attend religious services are clearly more likely to think that cheating on one's taxes is wrong. The correlation (not shown) is .18. Now, this is an attitude question about one kind of illegal behavior, and it's not about behavior itself, but it still supports the view that religious people are not more corrupt than the non-religious.

Cross-national correlates of corruption

Which kinds of countries are the most corrupt? Here are a few cross-national correlations:

Correlations

IQ -.56
Percent black .28
Percent Muslim .30
Weekly religious attendance .37

So corrupt countries are less intelligent, more black, more Muslim, and more religious. Nordic and English-origin countries--smart, wealthy, post-Protestant/secular--are the least corrupt of all countries. Wealthy Asian nations are also good. (By the way, according to the data, the United States has gotten more corrupt over the past decade.)

Which region is the most corrupt? The Blagojevich scandal has reminded us how corrupt Chicago politics is, but is it a problem endemic to the region?

The General Social Survey asked 1,513 people, "In the last five years, how often have you or a member of your immediate family come across a public official who hinted they wanted, or asked for, a bribe or favour in return for a service?" Answers ranged from "never" (1) to "very often" (5). Here are the means by region:


Corruption mean score

West South Central 1.31
East South Central 1.29
New England 1.26
Mountain 1.23
Middle Atlantic 1.21

USA 1.19

South Atlantic 1.16
Pacific 1.16
East North Central 1.16
West North Central 1.10

SD 0.59

First, 87% of respondents answered "never" (number not shown) which backs up the idea that the U.S. is a low-corruption country.

You can see that the Midwest, especially the western half, has the lowest levels of corruption. States from Texas and Oklahoma to Kentucky and Alabama have the biggest problem, and yes, New Orleans immediately came to mind. The difference between the best and worst regions is a third of a standard deviation.

These numbers match up with this USA Today corruption conviction map to some extent, but the conviction data show the Dakotas to be corrupt.

The state-by-state map, of course, gives a more detailed picture, but I trust survey data more since convictions depend on many factors and thus are a more indirect measure of corrupt behavior.

There's the stereotype of the "old boys network" in the South, but I've heard that a lot of those little Mexican towns in Texas are notoriously corrupt.