It might be offensive, but is it untrue? Note that we're not saying things about people as individuals. We're talking about national cultures, stereotypes and statistical averages.
This is not the same as amount of corruption (note how high China and Saudi Arabia are in the "most people can be trusted" index, while they don't rate as well in corruption indexes). Here's the Transparency's Corruption index map: https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results
> We're talking about national cultures, stereotypes and statistical averages.
Exactly, stereotypes... and no, they're not true. I live in Italy and know Russia well enough, and Russia is much more corrupted than Italy. How much northern than Russia can you go?
Cultural problem? Yes. Latitude-related problem? No. Linking this to latitude is like linking problems to the color of your skin: you can't change the color of your skin, nor your latitude. Culture, on the other hand, can and does change.
BTW Italy has indeed a big problem with corruption, but one funny thing is that most Italians like to publicly bash Italy, so the relative perception of corruption is even higher than it actually should be, especially vs countries where most people think "right or wrong, my Country" ;)
Well, Russia is neither North or South in this context, it is East. There's also a slant so that it's perhaps Nort-West compared to South-East.
But I also have the perception that within Italy, there is quite a strong north-south divide? Turin and Milan are quite different from Naples and Palermo, also in the mind of Italians, regarding level of corruption?
Don't you think this North/South rule is starting to get a little too many exceptions?
In Italy, too, there are big variations, but they aren't really so correlated to latitude (even if many people superficially think that way). Most of Sardinia is south of Naples, but the disrespect for rules/corruption is much lower (eg in Cagliari, which is a lot to the south of Naples). It's just not as simple as that.
"Where trust is high, crime and corruption are low". http://www.pewglobal.org/2008/04/15/where-trust-is-high-crim...
Regarding trust, below is one source for how people see it. Look at the European map. There's a bit of north/south divide (with Italy being somewhat north). http://www.jdsurvey.net/jds/jdsurveyActualidad.jsp?Idioma=I&...
This is not the same as amount of corruption (note how high China and Saudi Arabia are in the "most people can be trusted" index, while they don't rate as well in corruption indexes). Here's the Transparency's Corruption index map: https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results
Crime maps are many but what I can find quickly are not incompatible with this generalisation either: http://www.numbeo.com/crime/gmaps_rankings_country.jsp