Corruption Concerns Are Rising in Several Countries

While corruption is in fact a global issue, the degree to which people perceive it to be a problem varies greatly across countries. According to Ipsos’ What Worries the World survey, 27 percent of respondents from 30 countries named financial and political corruption as one of the three most pressing issues in their country at the end of the year 2025 (up one percentage point year-on-year), trailing only crime/violence, inflation, poverty/inequality and unemployment as one of the top five concerns on people's minds.

Indonesia and Hungary topped the ranking, with 61 and 54 percent of respondents, respectively, naming corruption as a top 3 worry, ahead of Peru (53 percent) and South Africa (52 percent). At the other end of the scale, respondents from the Netherlands, Germany and Singapore were most likely not to see corruption as a top 3 issue in their country (less than 10 percent, respectively). In the United States, the level of concern on this matter was relatively close to the global average (23 percent). As our chart also shows, several countries have experienced a significant surge in public concerns about corruption since the end of 2024, especially in Brazil (+9 percentage points), as well as South Africa, Peru, Mexico, Argentina and Turkey (+5 to +7 p.p.).