Is America a More Ignorant Country Than Israel?

Image by Julian Finney / Getty Images

By Jake Romm December 19, 2016

A week ago, Ipsos MORI, a market research company based in London, released their 2016 Index of Ignorance, which purportedly measures the level of ignorance in 40 countries from around the world. Ipsos MORI gathered their data from a survey taken by 27,250 people – between 500 and 1000 in each of the countries tested.

The survey, titled “Perils of Perception,” measures respondents’ accuracy when estimating figures like the relative size of the Muslim population in their country, or the number of people in their country who believe that homosexuality is unacceptable. The answers to the various questions and their accuracy relative to Ipsos MORI’s official data were combined to create the Index.

The United States placed in the top-5 most ignorant countries, with India being the most ignorant. Israel place 18th, right in the middle of the pack. The Netherlands placed lowest on the Index earning them the title of least ignorant country.

To what extent a population’s relative guessing skills actually measure anything like ignorance is open for debate (consider me a skeptic), but, in any event here are the full results from most ignorant to least:

India

China

Taiwan

South Africa

USA

Brazil

Thailand

Singapore

Turkey

Indonesia

Mexico

Canada

Montenegro

Russia

Serbia

Philippines

Hong Kong

Israel

Denmark

Argentina

France

Vietnam

Peru

Spain

Chile

Hungary

Japan

Belgium

Poland

Colombia

Sweden

Norway

Italy

Germany

Australia

Malaysia

Czech Republic

South Korea

United Kingdom

Netherlands

Jake Romm is the Forward’s culture intern. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter, @JakeRomm

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