Planning a longer than a couple of weeks overseas trip, or considering for countries where to relocate, many additional factors become into play than, for instance, booking a week in a southern European beach resort. Safety, infrastructure, culture, health services, friendliness, and many factors are important when staying a winter or settling into new home in a foreign country. Trust between people who live in a country can be a useful factor to consider.

If you ask a philosopher what trust is, the answer could be something like this: Trust is valuable. Without it, we face not only cooperation problems, but we also incur substantial risks to our well-being, namely, those ubiquitous risks to life that characterize the “state of nature”. When I travel, and ponder what kind of people might live in a country I’m going to visit, I relate trust to safety and honesty. If the trust level is high, I feel safe and like to think people are honest. Of course, everyone knows it is not that straightforward, but stereotypes often have a seed of truth in them.

Fortunately, Our World in Data has measured the level of trust people have in their fellow citizens in 90 countries across the world. Here is the top 10 countries where people trust in other people the most.

1. Denmark 74 % agree that most people can be trusted
2. Norway 72
3. Finland 68
4. China 63
5. Sweden 63
6. Iceland 62
7. Switzerland 59
8. Netherlands 57
9. New Zealand 57
10. Austria 50

8 out top 10 countries are European. Only China and New Zealand make it to the top 10 as non-European countries. If we zoom in on the 6 top countries alone, we find the 5 Nordic countries and China. Does this have anything to do with the world’s happiest countries that also tend to be the same Nordic countries? Who knows, but the Nordic nations must have done something right in that cool region of Europe.

The differences between all ranked European countries are wide. There are countries at the top, in the middle, and and at the bottom. The honor of the lowest trust in the entire ranking goes to Albania where only 3 % of people trust in other people. 3 people out of 100 trust other people in Albania, whereas in Denmark 74 people out of 100 trust fellow citizens.

Here is the rest of the list for top 50 countries.

11 Australia 49 % agree that most people can be trusted
12 Canada 47
13 UK 43
14 Germany 42
15 Macao 41
16 Spain 41
17 Belarus 40
18 Northern Ireland 39
19 U.S. 37
20 Hong Kong 36
21 Singapore 34
22 Estonia 34
23 Japan 34
24 Uzbekistan 34
25 South Korea 33
26 Lithuania 32
27 Taiwan 31
28 Thailand 29
29 Ukraine 28
30 Czechia 27
31 Hungary 27
32 Italy 27
33 Azerbaijan 26
34 France 26
35 Mongolia 26
36 Andorra 25
37 Slovenia 25
38 Poland 24
39 Pakistan 23
40 Russia 23
41 Kazakhstan 23
42 Latvia 22
43 Montenegro 22
44 Slovakia 22
45 Maldives 21
46 Tajikistan 21
47 Malaysia 20
48 Argentina 19
49 Guatemala 18
50 Puerto Rico 18

The survey collected 1,000–1,500 interviews of adults in each country. The question was: “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?” Possible answers: “Most people can be trusted”, “Do not know” and “Need to be very careful”.

Visual Capitalist has created a nice map that shows the trust level around the world.