1 in 4 Humans Paid a Bribe Last Year

Roughly 27% of people worldwide have paid a bribe to a government agency in the last 12 months, according to the latest Global Corruption Barometer report from Transparency International. The survey covered more than 114,000 people across 107 countries, the Wall Street Journal reports, and on the bright side, two-thirds said they refused to pay up when asked for bribes.

"Bribe-paying levels remain very high worldwide," the group's chair said. "But people believe they have the power to stop corruption." Of course, the numbers are skewed by the most corrupt nations; Sierra Leone took the cake with 84% of people paying up, while upright Japan, Australia, and Denmark each had only 1%. The US came in at 7%, but all is hardly hunky dory here, with 76% saying they believed the political parties were affected by corruption. (More corruption stories.)