The Most Racist Country in the Western World

Or homophobic, or xenophobic, or anti-semitic.

It's been said that industrialized nations are becoming more intolerant of foreigners, and a provocative new paper in the August issue of Kyklos tries to quantify just how bigoted Western nations are. (Free version of the paper is here.)

The paper's authors used responses from a question in the Human Beliefs and Values Survey -- a twice-a-decade survey of social and political attitudes around the world -- which asked respondents how they would feel about living next to: People of different ethnicities, Muslims, Jews, immigrants or foreign workers, and homosexuals.

The researchers used these answers as a proxy for bigotry in each country. (The survey took place in 1999-2000).

And the most prejudiced country? Drumroll please...

Northern Ireland with an estimated 44 percent of its population saying they wouldn't want to live next to one of the above five groups took the top "prize." Breathing down it's neck was Greece with 43.2 percent and at 37.6 percent Italy rounded out the top three.

The least bigoted nations were dominated by Scandinavian countries: Sweden (13.4%), the Netherlands (17.2%), Iceland (18.4%), Canada (21.5%), Denmark (21.9%).

(Germany joins the ranks of the most bigoted nations using an alternative measure based on how strong bigoted feelings were among those who had them, the researchers found.)

The United States was estimated to have a 30.4 percent level of bigotry.

On average, about one out of every three people in the 19 countries used in the study were bigoted.

By far the most hated group were homosexuals with an overall average of 19.6 percent of people saying they wouldn't want them as neighbors. Next up were Muslims with 14.5 percent, but since the survey was taken before September 11th, those results might be much different today.

Click the drop-down menu below to look at how each country stacks up in the different categories: