MELBOURNE, Jan 29 (IANS): Australia, the home of cricket legend Don Bradman, singing sensation Kylie Minougue, is also the land of world’s top sinners, a new study has claimed.

Envy is the biggest weakness of people down under in a study of the seven sins – lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.

A team of British researchers number-crunched the global differences in the deadly sins and found, when you add up the wrongdoings, Australia is at the top, according to BBC’s Focus magazine.

The US topped the table for gluttony while South Korea topped the list for lust. Iceland ranked number one for both pride and sloth and Mexico got the highest rank for greed.

The article, which argues that people are “bad” by nature, has found social data to compare nations under these categories of sins.

To determine a nation’s quota of wrath, the researchers examined levels of violent crime by comparing incidents of assault, rape and murder per 1,000 people.

For sloth, they looked at the number of days off workers have, while for pride the comparison was made on plastic surgery rates per capita.

The researchers studied the amount of time spent by people on porn to assess the ranking of lust. Greed was determined by the percentage of the population with annual earnings less than 50% of the median value.

Gluttony was calculated on the basis of nations’ per capita spending on calorie-rich fast food and envy was described as being jealous of others’ possessions and calculated using statistics for burglary, robbery and car theft.

For each of the sins, the researchers awarded 10 points to the nation with the highest score, and then decreasing points to countries that, for each sin, could boast of being in the top 10.

The results rank a top nation for each sin, news.com.au reported on Thursday.

Australians, are the best, or perhaps worst, sinners, scoring 46 points, ahead of the US on 32 points and Canada on 24. Britain came sixth overall, the website said.

Brisbane Anglican Bishop Geoff Smith said: “We are all sinners but should strive to be better people and care for one another.”

“I think Australians are very generous and compassionate people with a special identity,” he was quoted as saying. “In many ways the Australian lifestyle and character make us the envy of other nations.”

Australia was ranked third for lust and gluttony, fourth for greed and pride, seventh for wrath and ninth for sloth.

~ IANS

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