Country profile - USA

Corruption in United States

9 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 65.3 (2022).

Grand: 55.2 Petty: 72 Latest observed: 2017

United States: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of United States is Middle Atlantic States (61.8/100), and the least corrupt is New England (69.1/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 9 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, United States's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 65.3/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Middle Atlantic States (SCI 61.8/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: New England (SCI 69.1/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 55.2/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 72/100 (last directly observed in 2017).
  • Trend: United States's SCI moved from 66.9/100 (1995) to 65.3/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 9 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How United States compares: SCD vs. the CPI and World Bank

The Subnational Corruption Index is scored 0–100 on the same orientation as Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (higher = cleaner). The difference: the CPI and the World Bank measure the perceptions of experts and business executives and report one national number, while the SCI is built from what ordinary households perceive and experience — and it breaks United States into 9 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 65.3 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 69 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption 1.1 ≈ −2.5 to 2.5 Aggregated expert sources

Most recent year — SCI 2022, CPI 2022, CCI 2022. The SCD also publishes region-anchored SUB-CPI and SUB-CCI series so the CPI and World Bank measures can be read at the regional level.

SCI trajectory - 1995-2022

Country-level mean of the Subnational Corruption Index, averaged across all 9 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

70 64 1995 2022

Source: SCD v1.0 (Comprehensive Dataset). Years where the panel was filled by inter/extrapolation are included in the country mean.

Regions (9)

Each row is a sub-national region with its latest SCI score. Click into any row for the region's full time series.

# Region GDL code Years Latest SCI
1 Middle Atlantic States USAr202 1995-2022 61.8
2 East South Central USAr204 1995-2022 62.4
3 West South central USAr205 1995-2022 64.4
4 Rocky Mountain States USAr208 1995-2022 65.3
5 East North Central USAr206 1995-2022 65.5
6 South Atlantic USAr203 1995-2022 65.6
7 Pacific USAr209 1995-2022 66.7
8 West North Central USAr207 1995-2022 66.8
9 New England USAr201 1995-2022 69.1

Download United States

Per-country panel slice in CSV format. Columns: iso, country, gdl, region, year, sci. Direct dataset citations should reference the Figshare deposit (see How to cite).

Download USA.csv