The ignorance of nations, ranked

That’s the conclusion to be drawn from a study of public perception in 14 countries by Ipsos MORI, a U.K.-based market research firm. Ipsos polled over 11,000 residents in total about a range of social factors—from immigration to teen pregnancy to religious demographics. Here is the overall “Index of Ignorance,” from least to most informed:

1. Italy 2. U.S. 3. South Korea 4. Poland 5. Hungary 6. France 7. Canada 8. Belgium 9. Australia 10. Great Britain 11. Spain 12. Japan 13. Germany 14. Sweden

And here’s how each country stacked up on the individual issues. In the charts below, the “Guess” column represents the average of answers given by those polled. The “Difference” column represents the number of percentage points by which people missed the mark, on average. The “Actual Value” column is the actual statistic for each country.