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id	title	slug	type	status	content	archieml	archieml_update_statistics	published_at	updated_at	gdocSuccessorId	authors	excerpt	created_at_in_wordpress	updated_at_in_wordpress	featured_image	formattingOptions	markdown	wpApiSnapshot
8265	Trust	trust	page	publish	<!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Trust is a fundamental element of social capital – a key contributor to sustaining well-being outcomes, including economic development. In this entry we discuss available data on trust, as measured by attitudinal survey questions; that is, estimates from surveys asking about trusting attitudes.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Global comparisons of trust attitudes around the world today suggest very large time-persistent cross-country heterogeneity. In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden more than 60% of respondents in the World Value Survey agree that "most people can be trusted". And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Data from European countries shows that average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low – in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland. On the other hand, trust in the police is notably high, and in the majority of European countries people trust the police more than they trust each other.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Long-run data from the US, where the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972, suggests that people trust each other less today than 40 years ago. This decline in interpersonal trust in the US has been coupled with a long-run reduction in public trust in government – according to estimates compiled by the Pew Research Center since 1958, today trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Interpersonal trust attitudes correlate strongly with religious affiliation and upbringing. Some studies have shown that this strong positive relationship remains after controlling for several survey-respondent characteristics.{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p> This, in turn, has led researchers to use religion as a proxy for trust, in order to estimate the extent to which economic outcomes depend on trust attitudes. Estimates from these and other studies using an instrumental-variable approach, suggest that trust has a causal impact on economic outcomes.{ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=">Inherited trust and growth</a>. The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} This suggests that the remarkable cross-country heterogeneity in trust that we observe today, can explain a significant part of the historical differences in cross-country income levels.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Measures of trust from attitudinal survey questions remain the most common source of data on trust. Yet academic studies have shown that these measures of trust are generally weak predictors of actual trusting behaviour. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict <em>trustworthiness</em>. In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves.{ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence">Measuring trust</a>. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>How do countries around the world compare in terms of interpersonal trust?</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The World Value Survey allows cross-country comparisons of self-reported trust attitudes. This visualization shows estimates of the share of survey respondents agreeing with the statement "most people can be trusted".{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked <em>"Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?" </em>. Possible answers include "Most people can be trusted", "Don't Know" and "Can't be too careful". We report figures of "Most people can be trusted" as a share of all answers. {/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden, more than 60% of respondents agree that most people can be trusted. And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/self-reported-trust-attitudes?tab=map" width="300" height="150"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>How large are cross-country differences in estimates of interpersonal trust in Europe?</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The results from the World Value Survey discussed above show that there are very large, time-persistent cross-country differences in the share of people who report trusting others, even within European countries. But are these cross-country differences similarly large if we look at average ratings of trust in a scale that allows for differences in intensity? The following visualization shows the average rating of trust in others across European countries, using data from Eurostat. In this case, respondents answer to the question "would you say that most people can be trusted?" using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, results are consistent – countries with high interpersonal trust in the World Value Survey also have high trust ratings in the Eurostat survey. Yet heterogeneity on the more granular scale used by Eurostat is somewhat smaller.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-rating-of-trust-in-others-selected-countries" width="300" height="150"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>How much do people in developed countries trust public institutions?</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The OECD, using Eurostat data, provides estimates of trust in public institutions that are comparable to estimates of 'trust in others' (i.e. interpersonal trust). The following visualization, taken from the OECD report <a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en">How's life? (2015) </a>, shows average ratings of trust in (i) the political system, (ii) the police, and (iii) the legal system. These figures can be directly compared to those on interpersonal trust discussed in the <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-rating-of-trust-in-others-selected-countries">visualization above</a>. In both cases figures rely on Eurostat data from the same survey, so respondents here also rate trust in institutions using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low – in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The data suggests a broad correlation between trust in others, and trust in the different public institutions. Specifically, northern Europe (and Switzerland) report higher levels of trust, while southern and eastern Europe (and France) report lower levels across the board.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":6} --> <h6>Mean trust in public institutions, European countries, 2013 – Figure 3.14 in the OECD report <a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en">How's life? (2015) </a>{ref}Eurostat data. Response options range from 0 (‘‘no trust at all’’) to 10 (‘‘Complete trust’’).{/ref}</h6> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:image {"align":"center","id":8356,"linkDestination":"custom"} --> <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions.png"><img src="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions-750x378.png" alt="OECD(2015)_TrustInstitutions" class="wp-image-8356"/></a></figure></div> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>People in most European countries trust the police more than they trust each other</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>We mentioned above that the police is trusted more than other public institutions in most European countries. But do people in these countries trust the police more than they trust each other? This question is relevant, because trust in the police can become, in certain situations, an important substitute for interpersonal trust. This visualization plots Eurostat figures for trust in the police (y-axis) and trust in others (x-axis). The size of each dot represents national income (PPP-adjusted GDP per capita). We can see that there is a clear positive correlation; and in the majority of countries people report the same or higher trust in the police than trust in others. The clear exceptions are Greece, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and Slovenia – these are the countries that lie significantly below a hypothetical line with slope one (i.e. the line below which trust in others is higher than trust in the police). Denmark and the Netherlands, both with higher levels of trust than the mentioned countries, are also somewhat below this hypothetical line.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-in-others-vs-trust-in-police" width="300" height="150"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>Trust in OECD governments has been going up in recent years</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>From an inter-temporal perspective, data suggests that trust in public institutions has been going up recently in OECD countries. This visualization shows the OECD-average estimate of trust in governments over the period 2010–2020. The percentage of the population reporting confidence in the national government has increased from 35% in 2013 to 46% in 2020.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oecd-average-trust-in-governments" width="300" height="150"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>How much do people trust others, their government, journalists, and science?</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The Wellcome Global Monitor is the world’s largest study into how people around the world think and feel about science and major health challenges. It surveys over 140,000 people from more than 140 countries.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-neighborhood?country=HUN~MMR~USA~GBR~JPN~RUS~IND~CHN~NGA~IDN~BRA~FRA~DEU" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-who-trust-government" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-journalists-country?country=USA~RUS~IND~CHN~GBR~JPN~FRA~DEU~ITA~IDN~NGA~SWE" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-science?country=USA~GBR~CHN~IND~RUS~JPN~FRA~BRA~DEU~IDN~NGA~SWE" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>Country-specific surveys</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>In the US, trust in the federal government is at historically low levels</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The Pew Research Center recently constructed a series of long-run estimates of trust in the government for the US, staring 1958. This visualization uses their data, to plot the share of people who say they can trust the government in Washington always or most of the time.{ref}The survey asked the question "How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right?" Answers included "Just about always", "Most of the time", or "Only some of the time".{/ref} As it can be seen there are some clear patterns associated with political cycles, but in the long-run there is a negative trend. Today, trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels. The Pew Research Center has a <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/public-trust-in-government-1958-2015/">dedicated website</a>, with many interesting visualizations – including disaggregated trends by ethnicity and political affiliation. Further details and analysis available in the report <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/11/11-23-2015-Governance-release.pdf">Beyond Distrust: How Americans View their Government</a>.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/public-trust-in-government" width="300" height="150"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>In the US, people trust each other less now than 40 years ago</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In the US, the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972. To our knowledge, this is the longest available time-series on interpersonal trust estimates in the world. This visualization uses this source to show the evolution of trust in the US. Specifically, this plot shows the share of respondents agreeing with the statement "most people can be trusted" in the surveys 1972-2014.{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked <em>"Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?"</em>. Available replies are "Can trust", "Cannot trust", "Depends" and "Don't Know". We report figures of "Can trust" as a share of all answers. {/ref} As we can see, there are short-term fluctuations, but people in the US seem to trust each other less today than 40 years ago.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-attitudes-in-the-us" width="300" height="150"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>In the UK, trust in others has remained relatively stable over the last couple of decades – but other measures of social capital have not</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Trust is a key element of social capital – but it is not the only one. Data from the UK suggests that different aspects of social capital change in time at different rates. This chart, from the <a href="http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk">Centre for Social Investigation</a> at Nuffield College, Oxford, shows that in the UK trust in other people fluctuates year by year, but there is no trend over the last couple of decades. This is consistent with the figures from the World Value Survey, where the UK shows little variation between the 1998 and 2009 surveys. Interestingly, however, associations with voluntary organisations declined significantly over the same period – the chart shows that the percentage of the UK population that is active with one or more organization fell from 52% in 1993 to 43% in 2012.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":6} --> <h6>Trends in four measures of social capital, UK, 1991-2013 – Figure 2 in Centre for Social Investigation (2015){ref} This graph is taken from the report <a href="http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/CSI_15_The_uneven_distribution.pdf">CSI 15: The uneven distribution and decline of social capital in Britain</a>. The reported underlying data sources are the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the UK Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS), the Citizenship/ Community Life Survey (CLS), and the Health Survey for England (HSE){/ref}</h6> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:image {"align":"center","id":8414,"linkDestination":"custom"} --> <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital.png"><img src="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital-750x410.png" alt="CSI15_BritishSocialCapital" class="wp-image-8414"/></a></figure></div> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>In the UK trust in experts has mostly increased</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The chart shows data on trust in various groups of experts in the UK. The data is based on surveys that go back to 1983.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>There are large differences between professions – trust in journalists is low, while trust in professors, teachers, and doctors is high.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>For all groups – with the exception of clergy/priests – the levels of trust have inceased snce the first surveys were conducted.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:image {"id":42980,"sizeSlug":"large","linkDestination":"none"} --> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-800x406.png" alt="" class="wp-image-42980"/></figure> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>In Sweden, trust is not only very high, but also remarkably stable</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The data from Eurostat and the World Value Survey shows that Sweden is one of the countries with the highest levels of trust globally. This visualization from the <a href="http://som.gu.se">SOM institute</a> – an independent survey research organisation at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden –, shows that interpersonal trust in Sweden is not only high, but also very stable across time.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In this visualisation we see the degree of trust in others, raging from 0 to 10. We can see that estimates are very persistent – the share of individuals rating trust as low (0-3), medium (4-6) and high (7-10) has not changed significantly over the last two decades.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":6} --> <h6>Trust in people, Sweden, 1996-2015 – SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at <a href="http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf">http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf</a>{/ref}</h6> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:image {"align":"center","id":8418,"linkDestination":"custom"} --> <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople.png"><img src="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople-750x462.png" alt="SOM_SwedishTrustPeople" class="wp-image-8418"/></a></figure></div> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The data from the SOM in Sweden also allows an inter-temporal analysis of other measures of trust. This visualization shows estimates of general trust in politicians. In this case stability is reflected in the fact that political cycles are not associated with accentuated fluctuations. This seems to contrast with the data from the US, where public trust in government seems to be highly cyclical.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":6} --> <h6>General trust in politicians, Sweden, 1998-2015 – SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at <a href="http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf">http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf</a>{/ref}</h6> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:image {"align":"center","id":8419,"linkDestination":"custom"} --> <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians.png"><img src="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians-750x450.png" alt="SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians" class="wp-image-8419"/></a></figure></div> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>Trust and culture</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>Do trust attitudes correlate with religion?</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>A number of academic studies have explored the link between religious beliefs and self-reported trust attitudes. This figure, from Guiso et al. (2006),{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} summarizes the results from one such study using data from the World Values Survey. Specifically, the bars in this figure represent the effect of religious affiliation on trust, in percent of the sample mean of trust relative to "no religious affiliation". The reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). Since the data is available for the same country over several years, the authors also control for country-specific time-invariant characteristics (the so-called country fixed effects).</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Taking these results at face value, the reported effects suggest that being raised religiously raises the level of trust by 2.6 percent; and regularly attending religious services (the author's definition of being "religious" for the purpose of the figure), raises the level of trust by another 20 percent. Similarly, these results suggest that the effect of religion differs across denominations: self-reported Catholic and Protestant religious affiliation has a positive effect on trust; while Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist affiliation does not.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>As usual, these results have to be interpreted with caution, since reported figures do not control for unobservable time-varying factors that may simultaneously affect attitudes towards religion and trust; in other words, it is likely that there are unaccounted sources of bias that undermine the causal interpretation of the coefficients. Indeed, other studies using attitudinal survey questions on trust have found different results. For instance, Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., & Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&rep=rep1&type=pdf">here</a>{/ref} use data from the General Social Survey in the US, and find that religious affiliation is not statistically related to trust after controlling for further characteristics, such as whether survey respondents had a history of traumatic experiences.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":6} --> <h6>Effect of religious affiliation on trust relative to no religious affiliation – Guiso et al. (2006){ref}Reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). The underlying source of the data used for the regressions is the European Values Survey and World Values Survey 1981–84, 1990–93, 1995–97. Further details from the authors: Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref}</h6> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:image {"align":"center","id":8362,"linkDestination":"custom"} --> <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion.png"><img src="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion-750x434.png" alt="GuisoEtal(2006)_TrustReligion" class="wp-image-8362"/></a></figure></div> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>Trust and economic outcomes</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>What is the relationship between trust and GDP?</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In a much cited article, Arrow (1972){ref}Arrow, K. J. (1972). Gifts and exchanges. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 343-362.{/ref} says that "Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust, certainly any transaction conducted over a period of time."</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The extent to which trust is linked to economic development has been the subject of many academic papers in the economics literature on growth (see Guiso et al. 2006,{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} Algan and Cahuc 2010,{ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=">Inherited trust and growth</a>. The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} and the references therein). A common way to get a first-order approximation of this relationship is to estimate the correlations between trust and GDP per capita. This visualization provides evidence of this correlation, by plotting trust estimates from the World Value Survey against GDP per capita. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country. You can learn more about measures of national income in our <a href="http://ourworldindata.org/gdp-data/">entry on GDP data</a>.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>As it can be seen, there is a very strong positive relationship. Most academic studies find that this relationship remains after controlling for further characteristics. And similar results can also be obtained by looking at other measures of economic outcomes. Looking at outcomes across individuals, Guiso et al. (2006), for instance, report that trust has a positive and statistically significant correlation with the probability of becoming an entrepreneur, even after controlling for education, age and individual income. Their results also hold if religious affiliation of the respondents' ancestors is used as a proxy for trust – they thus argue that, since ancestors' religion correlates with respondents' trust attitudes, this instrumental variable approach can be taken as evidence that the estimated relationship goes in the suggested direction (i.e. that trust <em>leads</em> to entrepreneurship, rather than the other way around).</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Other studies using instrumental variables have also found similarly large effects. Algan and Cahuc (2010){ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=">Inherited trust and growth</a>. The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} predict that, according to their estimates, African countries would have a five-fold increase in GDP per capita if they had the same level of inherited social attitudes as Sweden, after controlling for lagged GDP per capita, contemporaneous political environment and time-invariant country characteristics.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Algan and Cahuc (2010) show that inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is significantly influenced by the country of origin and the timing of arrival of their forebears. This is their instrumental variable: the inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is used as a time-varying measure of inherited trust in the country of origin. This approach allows the authors to control for country fixed effects and interpret the effect of trust on growth <em>causally</em>. You can read a summary of their findings and approach in a <a href="http://voxeu.org/article/trust-and-economic-development">voxeu.org article written by the researchers</a>.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Nunn and Wantchekon (2011){ref}Nunn, N., & Wantchekon, L. (2011). <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/11986331/nunn-slave-trade.pdf?sequence=1">The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa</a>. The American Economic Review, 101(7), 3221-3252. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41408736{/ref} provide evidence to explain mistrust in Africa: they show that current differences in trust levels within Africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades. More specifically, they show that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today – and using a variety of different econometric strategies, they claim that this relationship is causal.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":6} --> <h6>Trust vs. GDP per capita, 2014 (or latest available data) {ref}Trust data corresponds to share of respondents in the World Value Survey agreeing with the statement "most people can be trusted". Possible answers include "Most people can be trusted", "Don't Know" and "Can't be too careful". GDP per capita data from Penn World Table.{/ref}</h6> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:image {"align":"center","id":8422,"linkDestination":"custom"} --> <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita.png"><img src="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-598x550.png" alt="Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita" class="wp-image-8422"/></a></figure></div> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>What is the relationship between trust and income inequality?</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Cross-country data, as well as within-country data, suggest that economic inequality is negatively related to trust. This visualization provides evidence of this relationship: it shows a scatter plot of trust estimates from the World Value Survey against income inequality measured by the Gini index. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country, with colors representing different world regions and dot sizes representing population. A Gini index of 0 reflects perfect equality, so the observed negative correlation in this graph implies that higher inequality is associated with lower trust. In other words, we can see that countries with higher income inequality also tend to report lower levels of trust. You can read more about income inequality and the Gini index in our entry on <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-prosperity/income-inequality/#the-gini-coefficient">income inequality</a>.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This negative relationship can be explained through various mechanisms: social ties may imply that people are more willing to trust those who are similar to themselves, or higher inequality may lead to conflicts over resources. The empirical work from Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., & Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&rep=rep1&type=pdf">here</a>{/ref} provides evidence in support of the former mechanism. Jordahl, H. (2007){ref}Jordahl, H. (2007). <a href="http://www.ifn.se/Wfiles/wp/wp715.pdf">Inequality and Trust</a>. Working Paper Series 715, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.{/ref} provides a discussion of these and other possible mechanisms.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:html --> <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/interpersonal-trust-vs-income-inequality" width="300" height="150"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>Trust and social outcomes</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>Is there a link between education and trust?</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>One of the reasons to justify government intervention in the market for education, is that education generates positive externalities.{ref}That positive externalities justify government intervention in the provision of education is essentially an efficiency argument. The logic is that individuals may not spend enough on education because they fail to internalize the positive effect that their education has on other people. But there are, of course, also equity arguments to justify government intervention in the provision of education – for instance, reducing inequality in education may be of intrinsic value, or may be instrumental in reducing inequalities in other outcomes.{/ref} This essentially means that investing in education yields both private and social returns. Private returns to education include higher wages and better employment prospects (as we discuss in our entry on <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/skill-premium-income-by-education/">Skill Premium</a>). Social return include pro-social behaviour (e.g. volunteering, political participation) and interpersonal trust.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This chart uses OECD results from the Survey of Adult Skills to show how self-reported trust in others correlates with educational attainment. More precisely, this chart plots the percentage-point difference in the likelihood of reporting to trust others, by education level of respondents. Those individuals with upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education are taken as the reference group, so the percentage point difference is expressed in relation to this group. As we can see, in all countries those individuals with tertiary education were by far the group most likely to report trusting others.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>And in almost every country, those with post-secondary non-tertiary education were more likely to trust others than those with primary or lower secondary education. The OECD's report <a href="http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1">Education at a Glance (2015)</a> provides similar descriptive evidence for other social outcomes. The conclusion is that adults with higher qualifications are more likely to report desirable social outcomes, including good or excellent health, participation in volunteer activities, interpersonal trust, and political efficacy. And these results hold after controlling for literacy, gender, age and monthly earnings.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":6} --> <h6>Likelihood of reporting to trust others, by educational attainment, OECD 2012 – Figure A8.4 in <a href="http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1">Education at a Glance (2015)</a>{ref}As per the source notes: "Percentage-point difference reflects the relative change of reporting to trust others compared to the reference category. For example, in Norway, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education reporting to trust others increases by 20 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education. Similarly, after accounting for literacy proficiency, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education increases by 16 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education."{/ref}</h6> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:image {"align":"center","id":8134,"linkDestination":"custom"} --> <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust.png"><img src="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust-750x441.png" alt="OECD_Education_Trust" class="wp-image-8134"/></a></figure></div> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Social cohesion is often defined as the capacity of a country to support peaceful collective decision making. This pair of plots, from the World Development Report (2013),{ref}<a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf">World Development Report 2013: Jobs</a>. Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0.{/ref} show the correlation between the index of peaceful collective decision making, and two key measures of social cohesion at the micro level: trust and civic engagement. The index of peaceful collective decision making is a quantitative indicator that, for each country, aggregates data on political stability, the absence of violence, and voice and accountability.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The figure shows a strong positive relationship: countries where people are more likely to report trusting others, are also countries where there is less violence and more political stability and accountability.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":6} --> <h6>Share reporting trust in people and index of civic engagement vs index of peaceful collective decision making – World Development Report (2013){ref} <a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf">World Development Report 2013: Jobs</a>. Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0. The original sources used by the World Development Report 2013 are the World Values Survey 2005 (database), World Values Survey Association, Stockholm; Worldwide Governance Indicators 2005. The original source notes: The analysis includes 56 countries (panel a) and 49 countries (panel b). “Index of peaceful collective decision making” is an average of indicators of “voice and accountability” and “political stability and the absence of violence” from the Worldwide Governance Indicators. “Index of civic engagement” is the average of responses to questions from the World Values Survey on (a) active membership in associations; (b) whether the respondent participated or would participate in a demonstration; and (c) whether the respondent would sign a petition. This work is available under the <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)</a>.{/ref}</h6> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:image {"align":"center","id":4354,"linkDestination":"custom"} --> <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-–-world-development-report-20130.png"><img src="http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-–-world-development-report-20130-750x370.png" alt="Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making – World Development Report (2013)0" class="wp-image-4354"/></a></figure></div> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- wp:heading --> <h2>Data Quality & Measurement</h2> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>How sensitive are estimates of interpersonal trust from attitudinal survey questions to changes in surveying methodologies?</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Attitudinal survey questions provide the main source of data to estimate interpersonal trust attitudes. Available evidence for countries with multiple such estimates, suggest that results are robust to the specific surveying methodologies. This scatter plot bears this out, by comparing cross-country estimates from different surveys. Specifically, this figure plots the estimated interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey, against interpersonal trust levels as measured by the European Social Survey and the Afrobarometer Survey. The resulting correlation is positive and very high.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":6} --> <h6>Interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey and European Values Study, and the European Social Survey and Afrobarometer Survey – Inglehart & Welzel (2010){ref} The source is Inglehart & Welzel (2010) - <a href="https://nnov.hse.ru/data/2011/03/21/1211300861/ChangingMassPriorities.pdf">Changing Mass Priorities: The Link between Modernization and Democracy</a>. Reflections, June 2010, Vol. 8/No. 2.. N = 28 r = .92{/ref}</h6> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:image {"align":"center","id":5987,"linkDestination":"custom"} --> <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels.png"><img src="http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-557x550.png" alt="Inglehart and Welzel 2010 Interpersonal trust levels" class="wp-image-5987"/></a></figure></div> <!-- /wp:image --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>Do trust estimates from attitudinal survey questions predict trusting <em>behaviour</em>?</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In an academic paper, Glaeser et al. (2000){ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence">Measuring trust</a>. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref} examine the predictive power of two types of survey questions: questions about trusting attitudes and questions about past trusting behavior. The authors examine the predictive power of these questions by comparing survey answers with actual trusting behaviour in an incentivised experimental setting with monetary rewards. They show that, while measures of past trusting behavior are better than the abstract attitudinal questions in predicting subjects' experimental choices, in general terms they are both weak predictors of trust. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict <em>trustworthiness</em>. In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves.<br><br></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading --> <h2>Data Sources</h2> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>OECD – Eurostat</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li><strong>Data:</strong> OECD data on trust is published in the <em>Society at a Glance - OECD Social Indicators</em>. This source relies on the estimates from Eurostat, specifically the EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC)</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> OECD member states</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong> Recent years</li><li><strong>Available at:</strong> online <a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/society-at-a-glance-2011/trust_soc_glance-2011-26-en">here</a>.</li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>The World Value Survey (WVS)</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li><strong>Data:</strong> Data on trust and many other social and cultural characteristics from cross-national and time-series surveys</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> The WVS covers almost 100 societies (nearly 90% of the world’s population). But not all countries have observations in each survey wave.</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong>  Several waves of surveys from 1981 onwards</li><li><strong>Available at:</strong> <a href="http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp">http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp</a></li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>US General Social Survey</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li><strong>Data:</strong> Time-series data on trust and many other social and cultural characteristics</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> US</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong> Yearly surveys since 1972</li><li><strong>Available at:</strong> <a href="https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org">https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org</a></li></ul> <!-- /wp:list -->	{ "id": "wp-8265", "slug": "trust", "content": { "toc": [], "body": [ { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Trust is a fundamental element of social capital \u2013 a key contributor to sustaining well-being outcomes, including economic development. In this entry we discuss available data on trust, as measured by attitudinal survey questions; that is, estimates from surveys asking about trusting attitudes.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Global comparisons of trust attitudes around the world today suggest very large time-persistent cross-country heterogeneity. In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden more than 60% of respondents in the World Value Survey agree that \"most people can be trusted\". And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Data from European countries shows that average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low \u2013 in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland. On the other hand, trust in the police is notably high, and in the majority of European countries \bpeople trust the police more than they trust each other.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Long-run data from the US, where the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972, suggests that people trust each other less today than 40 years ago. This decline in interpersonal trust in the US has been coupled with a long-run reduction in public trust in government \u2013 according to estimates compiled by the Pew Research Center since 1958, today trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Interpersonal trust attitudes correlate strongly with religious affiliation and upbringing. Some studies have shown that this strong positive relationship remains after controlling for several survey-respondent characteristics.{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23", "children": [ { "text": "Does culture affect economic outcomes?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": " This, in turn, has led researchers to use religion as a proxy for trust, in order to estimate the extent to which economic outcomes depend on trust attitudes. Estimates from these and other studies using an instrumental-variable approach, suggest that trust has a causal impact on economic outcomes.{ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=", "children": [ { "text": "Inherited trust and growth", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} This suggests that the remarkable cross-country heterogeneity in trust that we observe today, can explain a significant part of the historical differences in cross-country income levels.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "children": [ { "url": "#all-charts", "children": [ { "text": "See all interactive charts on trust \u2193", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Measures of trust from attitudinal survey questions remain the most common source of data on trust. Yet academic studies have shown that these measures of trust are generally weak predictors of actual trusting behaviour. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "trustworthiness", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ". In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves.{ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence", "children": [ { "text": "Measuring trust", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "How do countries around the world compare in terms of interpersonal trust?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 2, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The World Value Survey allows cross-country comparisons of self-reported trust attitudes. This visualization shows estimates of the share of survey respondents agreeing with the statement \"most people can be trusted\".{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "\"Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?\" ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ". Possible answers include \"Most people can be trusted\", \"Don't Know\" and \"Can't be too careful\". We report figures of \"Most people can be trusted\" as a share of all answers. {/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden, more than 60% of respondents agree that most people can be trusted. And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/self-reported-trust-attitudes?tab=map", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "How large are cross-country differences in estimates of interpersonal trust in Europe?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The results from the World Value Survey discussed above show that there are very large, time-persistent cross-country differences in the share of people who report trusting others, even within European countries. But are these cross-country differences similarly large if we look at average ratings of trust in a scale that allows for differences in intensity? The following visualization shows the average rating of trust in others across European countries, using data from Eurostat. In this case, respondents answer to the question \"would you say that most people can be trusted?\" using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, results are consistent \u2013 countries with high interpersonal trust in the World Value Survey also have high trust ratings in the Eurostat survey. Yet heterogeneity on the more granular scale used by Eurostat is somewhat smaller.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-rating-of-trust-in-others-selected-countries", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "How much do people in developed countries trust public institutions?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The OECD, using Eurostat data, provides estimates of trust in public institutions that are comparable to estimates of 'trust in others' (i.e. interpersonal trust). The following visualization, taken from the OECD report ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en", "children": [ { "text": "How's life? (2015) ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ", shows average ratings of trust in (i) the political system, (ii) the police, and (iii) the legal system. These figures can be directly compared to those on interpersonal trust discussed in the ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-rating-of-trust-in-others-selected-countries", "children": [ { "text": "visualization above", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". In both cases figures rely on Eurostat data from the same survey, so respondents here also rate trust in institutions using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low \u2013 in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The data suggests a broad correlation between trust in others, and trust in the different public institutions. Specifically, northern Europe (and Switzerland) report higher levels of trust, while southern and eastern Europe (and France) report lower levels across the board.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Mean trust in public institutions, European countries, 2013 \u2013 Figure 3.14 in the OECD report ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en", "children": [ { "text": "How's life? (2015) ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": "{ref}Eurostat data. Response options range from 0 (\u2018\u2018no trust at all\u2019\u2019) to 10 (\u2018\u2018Complete trust\u2019\u2019).{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 5, "parseErrors": [] }, { "alt": "OECD(2015)_TrustInstitutions", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "OECD2015_TrustInstitutions.png", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "People in most European countries trust the police more than they trust each other", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "We mentioned above that the police is trusted more than other public institutions in most European countries. But do people in these countries trust the police more than they trust each other? This question is relevant, because trust in the police can become, in certain situations, an important substitute for interpersonal trust. This visualization plots Eurostat figures for trust in the police (y-axis) and trust in others (x-axis). The size of each dot represents national income (PPP-adjusted GDP per capita). We can see that there is a clear positive correlation; and in the majority of countries people report the same or higher trust in the police than trust in others. The clear exceptions are Greece, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and Slovenia \u2013 these are the countries that lie significantly below a hypothetical line with slope one (i.e. the line below which trust in others is higher than trust in the police). Denmark and the Netherlands, both with higher levels of trust than the mentioned countries, are also somewhat below this hypothetical line.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-in-others-vs-trust-in-police", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Trust in OECD governments has been going up in recent years", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "From an inter-temporal perspective, data suggests that trust in public institutions has been going up recently in OECD countries. This visualization shows the OECD-average estimate of trust in governments over the period 2010\u20132020. The percentage of the population reporting confidence in the national government has increased from 35% in 2013 to 46% in 2020.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oecd-average-trust-in-governments", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "How much do people trust others, their government, journalists, and science?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The Wellcome Global Monitor is the world\u2019s largest study into how people around the world think and feel about science and major health challenges. It surveys over 140,000 people from more than 140 countries.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-neighborhood?country=HUN~MMR~USA~GBR~JPN~RUS~IND~CHN~NGA~IDN~BRA~FRA~DEU", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-who-trust-government", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-journalists-country?country=USA~RUS~IND~CHN~GBR~JPN~FRA~DEU~ITA~IDN~NGA~SWE", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-science?country=USA~GBR~CHN~IND~RUS~JPN~FRA~BRA~DEU~IDN~NGA~SWE", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Country-specific surveys", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 2, "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "In the US, trust in the federal government is at historically low levels", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The Pew Research Center recently constructed a series of long-run estimates of trust in the government for the US, staring 1958. This visualization uses their data, to plot the share of people who say they can trust the government in Washington always or most of the time.{ref}The survey asked the question \"How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right?\" Answers included \"Just about always\", \"Most of the time\", or \"Only some of the time\".{/ref} As it can be seen there are some clear patterns associated with political cycles, but in the long-run there is a negative trend. Today, trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels. The Pew Research Center has a ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/public-trust-in-government-1958-2015/", "children": [ { "text": "dedicated website", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ", with many interesting visualizations \u2013 including disaggregated trends by ethnicity and political affiliation. Further details and analysis available in the report ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/11/11-23-2015-Governance-release.pdf", "children": [ { "text": "Beyond Distrust: How Americans View their Government", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ".", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/public-trust-in-government", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "In the US, people trust each other less now than 40 years ago", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In the US, the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972. To our knowledge, this is the longest available time-series on interpersonal trust estimates in the world. This visualization uses this source to show the evolution of trust in the US. Specifically, this plot shows the share of respondents agreeing with the statement \"most people can be trusted\" in the surveys 1972-2014.{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "\"Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?\"", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ". Available replies are \"Can trust\", \"Cannot trust\", \"Depends\" and \"Don't Know\". We report figures of \"Can trust\" as a share of all answers. {/ref} As we can see, there are short-term fluctuations, but people in the US seem to trust each other less today than 40 years ago.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-attitudes-in-the-us", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "In the UK, trust in others has remained relatively stable over the last couple of decades \u2013 but other measures of social capital have not", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Trust is a key element of social capital \u2013 but it is not the only one. Data from the UK suggests that different aspects of social capital change in time at different rates. This chart, from the ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk", "children": [ { "text": "Centre for Social Investigation", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " at Nuffield College, Oxford, shows that in the UK trust in other people fluctuates year by year, but there is no trend over the last couple of decades. This is consistent with the figures from the World Value Survey, where the UK shows little variation between the 1998 and 2009 surveys. Interestingly, however, associations with voluntary organisations declined significantly over the same period \u2013 the chart shows that the percentage of the UK population that is active with one or more organization fell from 52% in 1993 to 43% in 2012.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Trends in four measures of social capital, UK, 1991-2013 \u2013 Figure 2 in Centre for Social Investigation (2015){ref} This graph is taken from the report ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/CSI_15_The_uneven_distribution.pdf", "children": [ { "text": "CSI 15: The uneven distribution and decline of social capital in Britain", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". The reported underlying data sources are the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the UK Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS), the Citizenship/ Community Life Survey (CLS), and the Health Survey for England (HSE){/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 5, "parseErrors": [] }, { "alt": "CSI15_BritishSocialCapital", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "CSI15_BritishSocialCapital.png", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "In the UK trust in experts has mostly increased", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The chart shows data on trust in various groups of experts in the UK. The data is based on surveys that go back to 1983.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "There are large differences between professions \u2013 trust in journalists is low, while trust in professors, teachers, and doctors is high.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "For all groups \u2013 with the exception of clergy/priests \u2013 the levels of trust have inceased snce the first surveys were conducted.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "alt": "", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37.png", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "In Sweden, trust is not only very high, but also remarkably stable", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The data from Eurostat and the World Value Survey shows that Sweden is one of the countries with the highest levels of trust globally. This visualization from the ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://som.gu.se", "children": [ { "text": "SOM institute", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " \u2013 an independent survey research organisation at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden \u2013, shows that interpersonal trust in Sweden is not only high, but also very stable across time.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In this visualisation we see the degree of trust in others, raging from 0 to 10. We can see that estimates are very persistent \u2013 the share of individuals rating trust as low (0-3), medium (4-6) and high (7-10) has not changed significantly over the last two decades.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Trust in people, Sweden, 1996-2015 \u2013 SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf", "children": [ { "text": "http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": "{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 5, "parseErrors": [] }, { "alt": "SOM_SwedishTrustPeople", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "SOM_SwedishTrustPeople.png", "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The data from the SOM in Sweden also allows an inter-temporal analysis of other measures of trust. This visualization shows estimates of general trust in politicians. In this case stability is reflected in the fact that political cycles are not associated with accentuated fluctuations. This seems to contrast with the data from the US, where public trust in government seems to be highly cyclical.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "General trust in politicians, Sweden, 1998-2015 \u2013 SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf", "children": [ { "text": "http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": "{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 5, "parseErrors": [] }, { "alt": "SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians.png", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Trust and culture", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 2, "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Do trust attitudes correlate with religion?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "A number of academic studies have explored the link between religious beliefs and self-reported trust attitudes. This figure, from Guiso et al. (2006),{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23", "children": [ { "text": "Does culture affect economic outcomes?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} summarizes the results from one such study using data from the World Values Survey. Specifically, the bars in this figure represent the effect of religious affiliation on trust, in percent of the sample mean of trust relative to \"no religious affiliation\". The reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). Since the data is available for the same country over several years, the authors also control for country-specific time-invariant characteristics (the so-called country fixed effects).", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Taking these results at face value, the reported effects suggest that being raised religiously raises the level of trust by 2.6 percent; and regularly attending religious services (the author's definition of being \"religious\" for the purpose of the figure), raises the level of trust by another 20 percent. Similarly, these results suggest that the effect of religion differs across denominations: self-reported Catholic and Protestant religious affiliation has a positive effect on trust; while Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist affiliation does not.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "As usual, these results have to be interpreted with caution, since reported figures do not control for unobservable time-varying factors that may simultaneously affect attitudes towards religion and trust; in other words, it is likely that there are unaccounted sources of bias that undermine the causal interpretation of the coefficients. Indeed, other studies using attitudinal survey questions on trust have found different results. For instance, Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., & Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&rep=rep1&type=pdf", "children": [ { "text": "here", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": "{/ref} use data from the General Social Survey in the US, and find that religious affiliation is not statistically related to trust after controlling for further characteristics, such as whether survey respondents had a history of traumatic experiences.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Effect of religious affiliation on trust relative to no religious affiliation \u2013 Guiso et al. (2006){ref}Reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). The underlying source of the data used for the regressions is the European Values Survey and World Values Survey 1981\u201384, 1990\u201393, 1995\u201397. Further details from the authors: Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23", "children": [ { "text": "Does culture affect economic outcomes?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 5, "parseErrors": [] }, { "alt": "GuisoEtal(2006)_TrustReligion", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion.png", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Trust and economic outcomes", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 2, "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "What is the relationship between trust and GDP?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In a much cited article, Arrow (1972){ref}Arrow, K. J. (1972). Gifts and exchanges. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 343-362.{/ref} says that \"Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust, certainly any transaction conducted over a period of time.\"", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The extent to which trust is linked to economic development has been the subject of many academic papers in the economics literature on growth (see Guiso et al. 2006,{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23", "children": [ { "text": "Does culture affect economic outcomes?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} Algan and Cahuc 2010,{ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=", "children": [ { "text": "Inherited trust and growth", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} and the references therein). A common way to get a first-order approximation of this relationship is to estimate the correlations between trust and GDP per capita. This visualization provides evidence of this correlation, by plotting trust estimates from the World Value Survey against GDP per capita. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country. You can learn more about measures of national income in our ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://ourworldindata.org/gdp-data/", "children": [ { "text": "entry on GDP data", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ".", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "As it can be seen, there is a very strong positive relationship. Most academic studies find that this relationship remains after controlling for further characteristics. And similar results can also be obtained by looking at other measures of economic outcomes. Looking at outcomes across individuals, Guiso et al. (2006), for instance, report that trust has a positive and statistically significant correlation with the probability of becoming an entrepreneur, even after controlling for education, age and individual income. Their results also hold if religious affiliation of the respondents' ancestors is used as a proxy for trust \u2013 they thus argue that, since ancestors' religion correlates with respondents' trust attitudes, this instrumental variable approach can be taken as evidence that the estimated relationship goes in the suggested direction (i.e. that trust ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "leads", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " to entrepreneurship, rather than the other way around).", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Other studies using instrumental variables have also found similarly large effects. Algan and Cahuc (2010){ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=", "children": [ { "text": "Inherited trust and growth", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} predict that, according to their estimates, African countries would have a five-fold increase in GDP per capita if they had the same level of inherited social attitudes as Sweden, after controlling for lagged GDP per capita, contemporaneous political environment and time-invariant country characteristics.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Algan and Cahuc (2010) show that inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is significantly influenced by the country of origin and the timing of arrival of their forebears. This is their instrumental variable: the inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is used as a time-varying measure of inherited trust in the country of origin. This approach allows the authors to control for country fixed effects and interpret the effect of trust on growth ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "causally", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ". You can read a summary of their findings and approach in a ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://voxeu.org/article/trust-and-economic-development", "children": [ { "text": "voxeu.org article written by the researchers", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ".", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Nunn and Wantchekon (2011){ref}Nunn, N., & Wantchekon, L. (2011). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/11986331/nunn-slave-trade.pdf?sequence=1", "children": [ { "text": "The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". The American Economic Review, 101(7), 3221-3252. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41408736{/ref} provide evidence to explain mistrust in Africa: they show that current differences in trust levels within Africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades. More specifically, they show that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today \u2013 and using a variety of different econometric strategies, they claim that this relationship is causal.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Trust vs. GDP per capita, 2014 (or latest available data) {ref}Trust data corresponds to share of respondents in the World Value Survey agreeing with the statement \"most people can be trusted\". Possible answers include \"Most people can be trusted\", \"Don't Know\" and \"Can't be too careful\". GDP per capita data from Penn World Table.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 5, "parseErrors": [] }, { "alt": "Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita.png", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "What is the relationship between trust and income inequality?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Cross-country data, as well as within-country data, suggest that economic inequality is negatively related to trust. This visualization provides evidence of this relationship: it shows a scatter plot of trust estimates from the World Value Survey against income inequality measured by the Gini index. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country, with colors representing different world regions and dot sizes representing population. A Gini index of 0 reflects perfect equality, so the observed negative correlation in this graph implies that higher inequality is associated with lower trust. In other words, we can see that countries with higher income inequality also tend to report lower levels of trust. You can read more about income inequality and the Gini index in our entry on ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-prosperity/income-inequality/#the-gini-coefficient", "children": [ { "text": "income inequality", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ".", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This negative relationship can be explained through various mechanisms: social ties may imply that people are more willing to trust those who are similar to themselves, or higher inequality may lead to conflicts over resources. The empirical work from Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., & Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&rep=rep1&type=pdf", "children": [ { "text": "here", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": "{/ref} provides evidence in support of the former mechanism. Jordahl, H. (2007){ref}Jordahl, H. (2007). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://www.ifn.se/Wfiles/wp/wp715.pdf", "children": [ { "text": "Inequality and Trust", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". Working Paper Series 715, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.{/ref} provides a discussion of these and other possible mechanisms.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/interpersonal-trust-vs-income-inequality", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Trust and social outcomes", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 2, "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Is there a link between education and trust?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "One of the reasons to justify government intervention in the market for education, is that education generates positive externalities.{ref}That positive externalities justify government intervention in the provision of education is essentially an efficiency argument. The logic is that individuals may not spend enough on education because they fail to internalize the positive effect that their education has on other people. But there are, of course, also equity arguments to justify government intervention in the provision of education \u2013 for instance, reducing inequality in education may be of intrinsic value, or may be instrumental in reducing inequalities in other outcomes.{/ref} This essentially means that investing in education yields both private and social returns. Private returns to education include higher wages and better employment prospects (as we discuss in our entry on ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/skill-premium-income-by-education/", "children": [ { "text": "Skill Premium", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": "). Social return include pro-social behaviour (e.g. volunteering, political participation) and interpersonal trust.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This chart uses OECD results from the Survey of Adult Skills to show how self-reported trust in others correlates with educational attainment. More precisely, this chart plots the percentage-point difference in the likelihood of reporting to trust others, by education level of respondents. Those individuals with upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education are taken as the reference group, so the percentage point difference is expressed in relation to this group. As we can see, in all countries those individuals with tertiary education were by far the group most likely to report trusting others.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "And in almost every country, those with post-secondary non-tertiary education were more likely to trust others than those with primary or lower secondary education. The OECD's report ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1", "children": [ { "text": "Education at a Glance (2015)", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " provides similar descriptive evidence for other social outcomes. The conclusion is that adults with higher qualifications are more likely to report desirable social outcomes, including good or excellent health, participation in volunteer activities, interpersonal trust, and political efficacy. And these results hold after controlling for literacy, gender, age and monthly earnings.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Likelihood of reporting to trust others, by educational attainment, OECD 2012 \u2013 Figure A8.4 in ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1", "children": [ { "text": "Education at a Glance (2015)", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": "{ref}As per the source notes: \"Percentage-point difference reflects the relative change of reporting to trust others compared to the reference category. For example, in Norway, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education reporting to trust others increases by 20 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education. Similarly, after accounting for literacy proficiency, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education increases by 16 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education.\"{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 5, "parseErrors": [] }, { "alt": "OECD_Education_Trust", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "OECD_Education_Trust.png", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Social cohesion is often defined as the capacity of a country to support peaceful collective decision making. This pair of plots, from the World Development Report (2013),{ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf", "children": [ { "text": "World Development Report 2013: Jobs", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0.{/ref} show the correlation between the index of peaceful collective decision making, and two key measures of social cohesion at the micro level: trust and civic engagement. The index of peaceful collective decision making is a quantitative indicator that, for each country, aggregates data on political stability, the absence of violence, and voice and accountability.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The figure shows a strong positive relationship: countries where people are more likely to report trusting others, are also countries where there is less violence and more political stability and accountability.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Share reporting trust in people and index of civic engagement vs index of peaceful collective decision making\u00a0\u2013\u00a0World Development Report (2013){ref} ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf", "children": [ { "text": "World Development Report 2013: Jobs", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0. The original sources used by the World Development Report 2013 are the World Values Survey 2005 (database), World Values Survey Association, Stockholm; Worldwide Governance Indicators 2005. The original source notes: The analysis includes 56 countries (panel a) and 49 countries (panel b). \u201cIndex of peaceful collective decision making\u201d is an average of indicators of \u201cvoice and accountability\u201d and \u201cpolitical stability and the absence of violence\u201d from the Worldwide Governance Indicators. \u201cIndex of civic engagement\u201d is the average of responses to questions from the World Values Survey on (a) active membership in associations; (b) whether the respondent participated or would participate in a demonstration; and (c) whether the respondent would sign a petition. This work is available under the ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0", "children": [ { "text": "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ".{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 5, "parseErrors": [] }, { "alt": "Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making \u2013\u00a0World Development Report (2013)0", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-\u2013-world-development-report-20130.png", "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "horizontal-rule", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Data Quality & Measurement", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 1, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "horizontal-rule", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "How sensitive are estimates of interpersonal trust from attitudinal survey questions to changes in surveying methodologies?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Attitudinal survey questions provide the main source of data to estimate interpersonal trust attitudes. Available evidence for countries with multiple such estimates, suggest that results are robust to the specific surveying methodologies. This scatter plot bears this out, by comparing cross-country estimates from different surveys. Specifically, this figure plots the estimated interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey, against interpersonal trust levels as measured by the European Social Survey and the Afrobarometer Survey. The resulting correlation is positive and very high.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey and European Values Study, and the European Social Survey and Afrobarometer Survey\u00a0\u2013 Inglehart & Welzel (2010){ref} The source is Inglehart & Welzel (2010) - ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://nnov.hse.ru/data/2011/03/21/1211300861/ChangingMassPriorities.pdf", "children": [ { "text": "Changing Mass Priorities: The Link between Modernization and Democracy", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". Reflections, June 2010, Vol. 8/No. 2.. N = 28 r = .92{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 5, "parseErrors": [] }, { "alt": "Inglehart and Welzel 2010 Interpersonal trust levels", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels.png", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Do trust estimates from attitudinal survey questions predict trusting ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "behaviour", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": "?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In an academic paper, Glaeser et al. (2000){ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence", "children": [ { "text": "Measuring trust", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref} examine the predictive power of two types of survey questions: questions about trusting attitudes and questions about past trusting behavior. The authors examine the predictive power of these questions by comparing survey answers with actual trusting behaviour in an incentivised experimental setting with monetary rewards. They show that, while measures of past trusting behavior are better than the abstract attitudinal questions in predicting subjects' experimental choices, in general terms they are both weak predictors of trust. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "trustworthiness", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ". In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "horizontal-rule", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Data Sources", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 1, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "horizontal-rule", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "OECD \u2013 Eurostat", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "list", "items": [ { "type": "text", "value": [ { "children": [ { "text": "Data:", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" }, { "text": " OECD data on trust is published in the ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Society at a Glance - OECD Social Indicators", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ". 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But not all countries have observations in each survey wave.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "children": [ { "text": "Time span:", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" }, { "text": "\u00a0 Several waves of surveys from 1981 onwards", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "children": [ { "text": "Available at:", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" }, { "url": "http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp", "children": [ { "text": "http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" } ], "parseErrors": [] } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "US General Social Survey", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "list", "items": [ { "type": "text", "value": [ { "children": [ { "text": "Data:", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" }, { "text": " Time-series data on trust and many other social and cultural characteristics", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "children": [ { "text": "Geographical coverage:", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" }, { "text": " US", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "children": [ { "text": "Time span:", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" }, { "text": "\u00a0Yearly surveys since 1972", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "children": [ { "text": "Available at:", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" }, { "url": "https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org", "children": [ { "text": "https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" } ], "parseErrors": [] } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "top": [], "type": "all-charts", "heading": "Interactive charts on trust", "parseErrors": [] } ], "type": "linear-topic-page", "title": "Trust", "authors": [ "Esteban Ortiz-Ospina", "Max Roser" ], "excerpt": "Trust is essential for community, wellbeing, and effective cooperation. How does trust vary between different societies and locations and what matters for levels of trust?", "dateline": "July 22, 2016", "subtitle": "Trust is essential for community, wellbeing, and effective cooperation. How does trust vary between different societies and locations and what matters for levels of trust?", "sticky-nav": [], "sidebar-toc": true, "featured-image": "Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-1.png" }, "createdAt": "2016-08-15T17:54:40.000Z", "published": false, "updatedAt": "2023-03-13T17:36:28.000Z", "revisionId": null, "publishedAt": "2016-07-22T20:55:11.000Z", "relatedCharts": [ { "slug": "confidence-in-un-wvs", "title": "Confidence in the United Nations", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 2 }, { "slug": "countries-that-adopt-guarantees-for-public-access-to-information", "title": "Countries with policy guarantees for public access to information", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 0 }, { "slug": "cross-country-variation-in-altruism", "title": "Country-level estimates of altruism", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 0 }, { "slug": "cross-country-variation-in-negative-reciprocity", "title": "Country-level estimates of negative reciprocity", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 0 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find political decision-making inclusive and responsive", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 0 }, { "slug": "share-people-trust-journalists-country", "title": "Share of people who trust journalists in their country", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 2 }, { "slug": "share-people-trust-neighborhood", "title": "Share of people who trust others in their neighborhood", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 2 }, { "slug": "share-people-trust-science", "title": "Share of people who trust science", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 2 }, { "slug": "share-who-trust-government", "title": "Share of people who trust their national government", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 2 }, { "slug": "share-of-population-satisfied-with-government-services", "title": "Share of population satisfied with government services", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 0 }, { "slug": "share-of-victims-who-reported-crime-to-the-police", "title": "Share of victims who reported crime to the police", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 0 }, { "slug": "safety-walking-alone", "title": "Share that feel safe walking alone around the area they live at night", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 0 }, { "slug": "trust-healthcare-vs-vaccine-safety", "title": "Trust in doctors and nurses vs. disagree that vaccines are safe", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 0 }, { "slug": "public-trust-in-government", "title": "Trust in government in the United States", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 2 }, { "slug": "oecd-average-trust-in-governments", "title": "Trust in government, OECD average", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 0 }, { "slug": "trust-state-institutions-wvs", "title": "Trust in institutions", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 3 }, { "slug": "trust-organizations-wvs", "title": "Trust in organizations", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 3 }, { "slug": "trust-in-others-vs-trust-in-police", "title": "Trust in others vs. trust in police, Europe", "variantName": null, "keyChartLevel": 0 } ], "publicationContext": "listed" }	{ "errors": [ { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag image" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag image" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag image" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag image" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag image" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag image" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag image" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag image" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag image" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag image" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag list" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag list" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag list" } ], "numBlocks": 108, "numErrors": 13, "wpTagCounts": { "html": 11, "list": 3, "image": 10, "heading": 36, "paragraph": 42 }, "htmlTagCounts": { "p": 42, "h2": 2, "h3": 5, "h4": 20, "h6": 9, "ul": 3, "div": 9, "figure": 10, "iframe": 11 } }	2016-07-22 20:55:11	2024-03-19 18:43:12	1Ts7cAiBzxpv9AYH2uwmMzMt88wVHQcl100nlabkxXyo	[ "Esteban Ortiz-Ospina" ]	Trust is essential for community, wellbeing, and effective cooperation. How does trust vary between different societies and locations and what matters for levels of trust?	2016-08-15 17:54:40	2023-03-13 17:36:28	https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-1.png	{}	Trust is a fundamental element of social capital – a key contributor to sustaining well-being outcomes, including economic development. In this entry we discuss available data on trust, as measured by attitudinal survey questions; that is, estimates from surveys asking about trusting attitudes. Global comparisons of trust attitudes around the world today suggest very large time-persistent cross-country heterogeneity. In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden more than 60% of respondents in the World Value Survey agree that "most people can be trusted". And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case. Data from European countries shows that average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low – in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland. On the other hand, trust in the police is notably high, and in the majority of European countries people trust the police more than they trust each other. Long-run data from the US, where the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972, suggests that people trust each other less today than 40 years ago. This decline in interpersonal trust in the US has been coupled with a long-run reduction in public trust in government – according to estimates compiled by the Pew Research Center since 1958, today trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels. Interpersonal trust attitudes correlate strongly with religious affiliation and upbringing. Some studies have shown that this strong positive relationship remains after controlling for several survey-respondent characteristics.{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). [Does culture affect economic outcomes?](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23). The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} This, in turn, has led researchers to use religion as a proxy for trust, in order to estimate the extent to which economic outcomes depend on trust attitudes. Estimates from these and other studies using an instrumental-variable approach, suggest that trust has a causal impact on economic outcomes.{ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). [Inherited trust and growth](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=). The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} This suggests that the remarkable cross-country heterogeneity in trust that we observe today, can explain a significant part of the historical differences in cross-country income levels. [See all interactive charts on trust ↓](#all-charts) Measures of trust from attitudinal survey questions remain the most common source of data on trust. Yet academic studies have shown that these measures of trust are generally weak predictors of actual trusting behaviour. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict _trustworthiness_. In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves.{ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). [Measuring trust](https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence). Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref} ## How do countries around the world compare in terms of interpersonal trust? The World Value Survey allows cross-country comparisons of self-reported trust attitudes. This visualization shows estimates of the share of survey respondents agreeing with the statement "most people can be trusted".{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked _"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 include "Most people can be trusted", "Don't Know" and "Can't be too careful". We report figures of "Most people can be trusted" as a share of all answers. {/ref} In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden, more than 60% of respondents agree that most people can be trusted. And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/self-reported-trust-attitudes?tab=map"/> ### How large are cross-country differences in estimates of interpersonal trust in Europe? The results from the World Value Survey discussed above show that there are very large, time-persistent cross-country differences in the share of people who report trusting others, even within European countries. But are these cross-country differences similarly large if we look at average ratings of trust in a scale that allows for differences in intensity? The following visualization shows the average rating of trust in others across European countries, using data from Eurostat. In this case, respondents answer to the question "would you say that most people can be trusted?" using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, results are consistent – countries with high interpersonal trust in the World Value Survey also have high trust ratings in the Eurostat survey. Yet heterogeneity on the more granular scale used by Eurostat is somewhat smaller. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-rating-of-trust-in-others-selected-countries"/> ### How much do people in developed countries trust public institutions? The OECD, using Eurostat data, provides estimates of trust in public institutions that are comparable to estimates of 'trust in others' (i.e. interpersonal trust). The following visualization, taken from the OECD report [How's life? (2015) ](http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en), shows average ratings of trust in (i) the political system, (ii) the police, and (iii) the legal system. These figures can be directly compared to those on interpersonal trust discussed in the [visualization above](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-rating-of-trust-in-others-selected-countries). In both cases figures rely on Eurostat data from the same survey, so respondents here also rate trust in institutions using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low – in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland The data suggests a broad correlation between trust in others, and trust in the different public institutions. Specifically, northern Europe (and Switzerland) report higher levels of trust, while southern and eastern Europe (and France) report lower levels across the board. ##### Mean trust in public institutions, European countries, 2013 – Figure 3.14 in the OECD report [How's life? (2015) ](http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en){ref}Eurostat data. Response options range from 0 (‘‘no trust at all’’) to 10 (‘‘Complete trust’’).{/ref} <Image filename="OECD2015_TrustInstitutions.png" alt="OECD(2015)_TrustInstitutions"/> ### People in most European countries trust the police more than they trust each other We mentioned above that the police is trusted more than other public institutions in most European countries. But do people in these countries trust the police more than they trust each other? This question is relevant, because trust in the police can become, in certain situations, an important substitute for interpersonal trust. This visualization plots Eurostat figures for trust in the police (y-axis) and trust in others (x-axis). The size of each dot represents national income (PPP-adjusted GDP per capita). We can see that there is a clear positive correlation; and in the majority of countries people report the same or higher trust in the police than trust in others. The clear exceptions are Greece, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and Slovenia – these are the countries that lie significantly below a hypothetical line with slope one (i.e. the line below which trust in others is higher than trust in the police). Denmark and the Netherlands, both with higher levels of trust than the mentioned countries, are also somewhat below this hypothetical line. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-in-others-vs-trust-in-police"/> ### Trust in OECD governments has been going up in recent years From an inter-temporal perspective, data suggests that trust in public institutions has been going up recently in OECD countries. This visualization shows the OECD-average estimate of trust in governments over the period 2010–2020. The percentage of the population reporting confidence in the national government has increased from 35% in 2013 to 46% in 2020. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oecd-average-trust-in-governments"/> ### How much do people trust others, their government, journalists, and science? The Wellcome Global Monitor is the world’s largest study into how people around the world think and feel about science and major health challenges. It surveys over 140,000 people from more than 140 countries. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-neighborhood?country=HUN~MMR~USA~GBR~JPN~RUS~IND~CHN~NGA~IDN~BRA~FRA~DEU"/> <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-who-trust-government"/> <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-journalists-country?country=USA~RUS~IND~CHN~GBR~JPN~FRA~DEU~ITA~IDN~NGA~SWE"/> <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-science?country=USA~GBR~CHN~IND~RUS~JPN~FRA~BRA~DEU~IDN~NGA~SWE"/> ## Country-specific surveys ### In the US, trust in the federal government is at historically low levels The Pew Research Center recently constructed a series of long-run estimates of trust in the government for the US, staring 1958. This visualization uses their data, to plot the share of people who say they can trust the government in Washington always or most of the time.{ref}The survey asked the question "How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right?" Answers included "Just about always", "Most of the time", or "Only some of the time".{/ref} As it can be seen there are some clear patterns associated with political cycles, but in the long-run there is a negative trend. Today, trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels. The Pew Research Center has a [dedicated website](http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/public-trust-in-government-1958-2015/), with many interesting visualizations – including disaggregated trends by ethnicity and political affiliation. Further details and analysis available in the report [Beyond Distrust: How Americans View their Government](http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/11/11-23-2015-Governance-release.pdf). <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/public-trust-in-government"/> ### In the US, people trust each other less now than 40 years ago In the US, the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972. To our knowledge, this is the longest available time-series on interpersonal trust estimates in the world. This visualization uses this source to show the evolution of trust in the US. Specifically, this plot shows the share of respondents agreeing with the statement "most people can be trusted" in the surveys 1972-2014.{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked _"Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?"_. Available replies are "Can trust", "Cannot trust", "Depends" and "Don't Know". We report figures of "Can trust" as a share of all answers. {/ref} As we can see, there are short-term fluctuations, but people in the US seem to trust each other less today than 40 years ago. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-attitudes-in-the-us"/> ### In the UK, trust in others has remained relatively stable over the last couple of decades – but other measures of social capital have not Trust is a key element of social capital – but it is not the only one. Data from the UK suggests that different aspects of social capital change in time at different rates. This chart, from the [Centre for Social Investigation](http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk) at Nuffield College, Oxford, shows that in the UK trust in other people fluctuates year by year, but there is no trend over the last couple of decades. This is consistent with the figures from the World Value Survey, where the UK shows little variation between the 1998 and 2009 surveys. Interestingly, however, associations with voluntary organisations declined significantly over the same period – the chart shows that the percentage of the UK population that is active with one or more organization fell from 52% in 1993 to 43% in 2012. ##### Trends in four measures of social capital, UK, 1991-2013 – Figure 2 in Centre for Social Investigation (2015){ref} This graph is taken from the report [CSI 15: The uneven distribution and decline of social capital in Britain](http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/CSI_15_The_uneven_distribution.pdf). The reported underlying data sources are the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the UK Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS), the Citizenship/ Community Life Survey (CLS), and the Health Survey for England (HSE){/ref} <Image filename="CSI15_BritishSocialCapital.png" alt="CSI15_BritishSocialCapital"/> ### In the UK trust in experts has mostly increased The chart shows data on trust in various groups of experts in the UK. The data is based on surveys that go back to 1983. There are large differences between professions – trust in journalists is low, while trust in professors, teachers, and doctors is high. For all groups – with the exception of clergy/priests – the levels of trust have inceased snce the first surveys were conducted. <Image filename="Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37.png" alt=""/> ### In Sweden, trust is not only very high, but also remarkably stable The data from Eurostat and the World Value Survey shows that Sweden is one of the countries with the highest levels of trust globally. This visualization from the [SOM institute](http://som.gu.se) – an independent survey research organisation at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden –, shows that interpersonal trust in Sweden is not only high, but also very stable across time. In this visualisation we see the degree of trust in others, raging from 0 to 10. We can see that estimates are very persistent – the share of individuals rating trust as low (0-3), medium (4-6) and high (7-10) has not changed significantly over the last two decades. ##### Trust in people, Sweden, 1996-2015 – SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at [http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf](http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf){/ref} <Image filename="SOM_SwedishTrustPeople.png" alt="SOM_SwedishTrustPeople"/> The data from the SOM in Sweden also allows an inter-temporal analysis of other measures of trust. This visualization shows estimates of general trust in politicians. In this case stability is reflected in the fact that political cycles are not associated with accentuated fluctuations. This seems to contrast with the data from the US, where public trust in government seems to be highly cyclical. ##### General trust in politicians, Sweden, 1998-2015 – SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at [http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf](http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf){/ref} <Image filename="SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians.png" alt="SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians"/> ## Trust and culture ### Do trust attitudes correlate with religion? A number of academic studies have explored the link between religious beliefs and self-reported trust attitudes. This figure, from Guiso et al. (2006),{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). [Does culture affect economic outcomes?](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23). The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} summarizes the results from one such study using data from the World Values Survey. Specifically, the bars in this figure represent the effect of religious affiliation on trust, in percent of the sample mean of trust relative to "no religious affiliation". The reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). Since the data is available for the same country over several years, the authors also control for country-specific time-invariant characteristics (the so-called country fixed effects). Taking these results at face value, the reported effects suggest that being raised religiously raises the level of trust by 2.6 percent; and regularly attending religious services (the author's definition of being "religious" for the purpose of the figure), raises the level of trust by another 20 percent. Similarly, these results suggest that the effect of religion differs across denominations: self-reported Catholic and Protestant religious affiliation has a positive effect on trust; while Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist affiliation does not. As usual, these results have to be interpreted with caution, since reported figures do not control for unobservable time-varying factors that may simultaneously affect attitudes towards religion and trust; in other words, it is likely that there are unaccounted sources of bias that undermine the causal interpretation of the coefficients. Indeed, other studies using attitudinal survey questions on trust have found different results. For instance, Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., & Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from [here](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&rep=rep1&type=pdf){/ref} use data from the General Social Survey in the US, and find that religious affiliation is not statistically related to trust after controlling for further characteristics, such as whether survey respondents had a history of traumatic experiences. ##### Effect of religious affiliation on trust relative to no religious affiliation – Guiso et al. (2006){ref}Reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). The underlying source of the data used for the regressions is the European Values Survey and World Values Survey 1981–84, 1990–93, 1995–97. Further details from the authors: Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). [Does culture affect economic outcomes?](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23). The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} <Image filename="GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion.png" alt="GuisoEtal(2006)_TrustReligion"/> ## Trust and economic outcomes ### What is the relationship between trust and GDP? In a much cited article, Arrow (1972){ref}Arrow, K. J. (1972). Gifts and exchanges. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 343-362.{/ref} says that "Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust, certainly any transaction conducted over a period of time." The extent to which trust is linked to economic development has been the subject of many academic papers in the economics literature on growth (see Guiso et al. 2006,{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). [Does culture affect economic outcomes?](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23). The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} Algan and Cahuc 2010,{ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). [Inherited trust and growth](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=). The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} and the references therein). A common way to get a first-order approximation of this relationship is to estimate the correlations between trust and GDP per capita. This visualization provides evidence of this correlation, by plotting trust estimates from the World Value Survey against GDP per capita. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country. You can learn more about measures of national income in our [entry on GDP data](http://ourworldindata.org/gdp-data/). As it can be seen, there is a very strong positive relationship. Most academic studies find that this relationship remains after controlling for further characteristics. And similar results can also be obtained by looking at other measures of economic outcomes. Looking at outcomes across individuals, Guiso et al. (2006), for instance, report that trust has a positive and statistically significant correlation with the probability of becoming an entrepreneur, even after controlling for education, age and individual income. Their results also hold if religious affiliation of the respondents' ancestors is used as a proxy for trust – they thus argue that, since ancestors' religion correlates with respondents' trust attitudes, this instrumental variable approach can be taken as evidence that the estimated relationship goes in the suggested direction (i.e. that trust _leads_ to entrepreneurship, rather than the other way around). Other studies using instrumental variables have also found similarly large effects. Algan and Cahuc (2010){ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). [Inherited trust and growth](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=). The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} predict that, according to their estimates, African countries would have a five-fold increase in GDP per capita if they had the same level of inherited social attitudes as Sweden, after controlling for lagged GDP per capita, contemporaneous political environment and time-invariant country characteristics. Algan and Cahuc (2010) show that inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is significantly influenced by the country of origin and the timing of arrival of their forebears. This is their instrumental variable: the inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is used as a time-varying measure of inherited trust in the country of origin. This approach allows the authors to control for country fixed effects and interpret the effect of trust on growth _causally_. You can read a summary of their findings and approach in a [voxeu.org article written by the researchers](http://voxeu.org/article/trust-and-economic-development). Nunn and Wantchekon (2011){ref}Nunn, N., & Wantchekon, L. (2011). [The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa](https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/11986331/nunn-slave-trade.pdf?sequence=1). The American Economic Review, 101(7), 3221-3252. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41408736{/ref} provide evidence to explain mistrust in Africa: they show that current differences in trust levels within Africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades. More specifically, they show that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today – and using a variety of different econometric strategies, they claim that this relationship is causal. ##### Trust vs. GDP per capita, 2014 (or latest available data) {ref}Trust data corresponds to share of respondents in the World Value Survey agreeing with the statement "most people can be trusted". Possible answers include "Most people can be trusted", "Don't Know" and "Can't be too careful". GDP per capita data from Penn World Table.{/ref} <Image filename="Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita.png" alt="Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita"/> ### What is the relationship between trust and income inequality? Cross-country data, as well as within-country data, suggest that economic inequality is negatively related to trust. This visualization provides evidence of this relationship: it shows a scatter plot of trust estimates from the World Value Survey against income inequality measured by the Gini index. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country, with colors representing different world regions and dot sizes representing population. A Gini index of 0 reflects perfect equality, so the observed negative correlation in this graph implies that higher inequality is associated with lower trust. In other words, we can see that countries with higher income inequality also tend to report lower levels of trust. You can read more about income inequality and the Gini index in our entry on [income inequality](https://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-prosperity/income-inequality/#the-gini-coefficient). This negative relationship can be explained through various mechanisms: social ties may imply that people are more willing to trust those who are similar to themselves, or higher inequality may lead to conflicts over resources. The empirical work from Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., & Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from [here](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&rep=rep1&type=pdf){/ref} provides evidence in support of the former mechanism. Jordahl, H. (2007){ref}Jordahl, H. (2007). [Inequality and Trust](http://www.ifn.se/Wfiles/wp/wp715.pdf). Working Paper Series 715, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.{/ref} provides a discussion of these and other possible mechanisms. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/interpersonal-trust-vs-income-inequality"/> ## Trust and social outcomes ### Is there a link between education and trust? One of the reasons to justify government intervention in the market for education, is that education generates positive externalities.{ref}That positive externalities justify government intervention in the provision of education is essentially an efficiency argument. The logic is that individuals may not spend enough on education because they fail to internalize the positive effect that their education has on other people. But there are, of course, also equity arguments to justify government intervention in the provision of education – for instance, reducing inequality in education may be of intrinsic value, or may be instrumental in reducing inequalities in other outcomes.{/ref} This essentially means that investing in education yields both private and social returns. Private returns to education include higher wages and better employment prospects (as we discuss in our entry on [Skill Premium](https://ourworldindata.org/skill-premium-income-by-education/)). Social return include pro-social behaviour (e.g. volunteering, political participation) and interpersonal trust. This chart uses OECD results from the Survey of Adult Skills to show how self-reported trust in others correlates with educational attainment. More precisely, this chart plots the percentage-point difference in the likelihood of reporting to trust others, by education level of respondents. Those individuals with upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education are taken as the reference group, so the percentage point difference is expressed in relation to this group. As we can see, in all countries those individuals with tertiary education were by far the group most likely to report trusting others. And in almost every country, those with post-secondary non-tertiary education were more likely to trust others than those with primary or lower secondary education. The OECD's report [Education at a Glance (2015)](http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1) provides similar descriptive evidence for other social outcomes. The conclusion is that adults with higher qualifications are more likely to report desirable social outcomes, including good or excellent health, participation in volunteer activities, interpersonal trust, and political efficacy. And these results hold after controlling for literacy, gender, age and monthly earnings. ##### Likelihood of reporting to trust others, by educational attainment, OECD 2012 – Figure A8.4 in [Education at a Glance (2015)](http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1){ref}As per the source notes: "Percentage-point difference reflects the relative change of reporting to trust others compared to the reference category. For example, in Norway, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education reporting to trust others increases by 20 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education. Similarly, after accounting for literacy proficiency, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education increases by 16 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education."{/ref} <Image filename="OECD_Education_Trust.png" alt="OECD_Education_Trust"/> ### Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making Social cohesion is often defined as the capacity of a country to support peaceful collective decision making. This pair of plots, from the World Development Report (2013),{ref}[World Development Report 2013: Jobs](http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf). Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0.{/ref} show the correlation between the index of peaceful collective decision making, and two key measures of social cohesion at the micro level: trust and civic engagement. The index of peaceful collective decision making is a quantitative indicator that, for each country, aggregates data on political stability, the absence of violence, and voice and accountability. The figure shows a strong positive relationship: countries where people are more likely to report trusting others, are also countries where there is less violence and more political stability and accountability. ##### Share reporting trust in people and index of civic engagement vs index of peaceful collective decision making – World Development Report (2013){ref} [World Development Report 2013: Jobs](http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf). Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0. The original sources used by the World Development Report 2013 are the World Values Survey 2005 (database), World Values Survey Association, Stockholm; Worldwide Governance Indicators 2005. The original source notes: The analysis includes 56 countries (panel a) and 49 countries (panel b). “Index of peaceful collective decision making” is an average of indicators of “voice and accountability” and “political stability and the absence of violence” from the Worldwide Governance Indicators. “Index of civic engagement” is the average of responses to questions from the World Values Survey on (a) active membership in associations; (b) whether the respondent participated or would participate in a demonstration; and (c) whether the respondent would sign a petition. This work is available under the [Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0).{/ref} <Image filename="ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-–-world-development-report-20130.png" alt="Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making – World Development Report (2013)0"/> --- # Data Quality & Measurement --- ### How sensitive are estimates of interpersonal trust from attitudinal survey questions to changes in surveying methodologies? Attitudinal survey questions provide the main source of data to estimate interpersonal trust attitudes. Available evidence for countries with multiple such estimates, suggest that results are robust to the specific surveying methodologies. This scatter plot bears this out, by comparing cross-country estimates from different surveys. Specifically, this figure plots the estimated interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey, against interpersonal trust levels as measured by the European Social Survey and the Afrobarometer Survey. The resulting correlation is positive and very high. ##### Interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey and European Values Study, and the European Social Survey and Afrobarometer Survey – Inglehart & Welzel (2010){ref} The source is Inglehart & Welzel (2010) - [Changing Mass Priorities: The Link between Modernization and Democracy](https://nnov.hse.ru/data/2011/03/21/1211300861/ChangingMassPriorities.pdf). Reflections, June 2010, Vol. 8/No. 2.. N = 28 r = .92{/ref} <Image filename="ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels.png" alt="Inglehart and Welzel 2010 Interpersonal trust levels"/> ### Do trust estimates from attitudinal survey questions predict trusting _behaviour_? In an academic paper, Glaeser et al. (2000){ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). [Measuring trust](https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence). Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref} examine the predictive power of two types of survey questions: questions about trusting attitudes and questions about past trusting behavior. The authors examine the predictive power of these questions by comparing survey answers with actual trusting behaviour in an incentivised experimental setting with monetary rewards. They show that, while measures of past trusting behavior are better than the abstract attitudinal questions in predicting subjects' experimental choices, in general terms they are both weak predictors of trust. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict _trustworthiness_. In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves. --- # Data Sources --- ### OECD – Eurostat * Data: OECD data on trust is published in the _Society at a Glance - OECD Social Indicators_. This source relies on the estimates from Eurostat, specifically the EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) * Geographical coverage: OECD member states * Time span: Recent years * Available at: online [here](http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/society-at-a-glance-2011/trust_soc_glance-2011-26-en). ### The World Value Survey (WVS) * Data: Data on trust and many other social and cultural characteristics from cross-national and time-series surveys * Geographical coverage: The WVS covers almost 100 societies (nearly 90% of the world’s population). But not all countries have observations in each survey wave. * Time span: Several waves of surveys from 1981 onwards * Available at:[http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp](http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp) ### US General Social Survey * Data: Time-series data on trust and many other social and cultural characteristics * Geographical coverage: US * Time span: Yearly surveys since 1972 * Available at:[https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org](https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org) <AllCharts heading="Interactive charts on trust"/>	{ "id": 8265, "date": "2016-07-22T20:55:11", "guid": { "rendered": "https://ourworldindata.org/?page_id=8265" }, "link": "https://owid.cloud/trust", "meta": { "owid_publication_context_meta_field": [], "owid_key_performance_indicators_meta_field": { "raw": "Trust levels can vary a lot between countries and groups of society.", "rendered": "<p>Trust levels can vary a lot between countries and groups of society.</p>\n" } }, "slug": "trust", "tags": [], "type": "page", "title": { "rendered": "Trust" }, "_links": { "self": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/pages/8265" } ], "about": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/types/page" } ], "author": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/users/10", "embeddable": true } ], "curies": [ { "href": "https://api.w.org/{rel}", "name": "wp", "templated": true } ], "replies": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=8265", "embeddable": true } ], "wp:term": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/categories?post=8265", "taxonomy": "category", "embeddable": true }, { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/tags?post=8265", "taxonomy": "post_tag", "embeddable": true } ], "collection": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/pages" } ], "wp:attachment": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/media?parent=8265" } ], "version-history": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/pages/8265/revisions", "count": 30 } ], "wp:featuredmedia": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/media/9565", "embeddable": true } ], "predecessor-version": [ { "id": 56255, "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/pages/8265/revisions/56255" } ] }, "author": 10, "parent": 0, "status": "publish", "content": { "rendered": "\n<p>Trust is a fundamental element of social capital \u2013 a key contributor to sustaining well-being outcomes, including economic development. In this entry we discuss available data on trust, as measured by attitudinal survey questions; that is, estimates from surveys asking about trusting attitudes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Global comparisons of trust attitudes around the world today suggest very large time-persistent cross-country heterogeneity. In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden more than 60% of respondents in the World Value Survey agree that “most people can be trusted”. And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Data from European countries shows that average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low \u2013 in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland. On the other hand, trust in the police is notably high, and in the majority of European countries \bpeople trust the police more than they trust each other.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Long-run data from the US, where the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972, suggests that people trust each other less today than 40 years ago. This decline in interpersonal trust in the US has been coupled with a long-run reduction in public trust in government \u2013 according to estimates compiled by the Pew Research Center since 1958, today trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Interpersonal trust attitudes correlate strongly with religious affiliation and upbringing. Some studies have shown that this strong positive relationship remains after controlling for several survey-respondent characteristics.{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). <a href=\"https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23\">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p> This, in turn, has led researchers to use religion as a proxy for trust, in order to estimate the extent to which economic outcomes depend on trust attitudes. Estimates from these and other studies using an instrumental-variable approach, suggest that trust has a causal impact on economic outcomes.{ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). <a href=\"https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=\">Inherited trust and growth</a>. The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} This suggests that the remarkable cross-country heterogeneity in trust that we observe today, can explain a significant part of the historical differences in cross-country income levels.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Measures of trust from attitudinal survey questions remain the most common source of data on trust. Yet academic studies have shown that these measures of trust are generally weak predictors of actual trusting behaviour. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict <em>trustworthiness</em>. In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves.{ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). <a href=\"https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence\">Measuring trust</a>. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<h3>How do countries around the world compare in terms of interpersonal trust?</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The World Value Survey allows cross-country comparisons of self-reported trust attitudes. This visualization shows estimates of the share of survey respondents agreeing with the statement “most people can be trusted”.{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked <em>“Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?” </em>. Possible answers include “Most people can be trusted”, “Don’t Know” and “Can’t be too careful”. We report figures of “Most people can be trusted” as a share of all answers. {/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden, more than 60% of respondents agree that most people can be trusted. And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/self-reported-trust-attitudes?tab=map\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h4>How large are cross-country differences in estimates of interpersonal trust in Europe?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The results from the World Value Survey discussed above show that there are very large, time-persistent cross-country differences in the share of people who report trusting others, even within European countries. But are these cross-country differences similarly large if we look at average ratings of trust in a scale that allows for differences in intensity? The following visualization shows the average rating of trust in others across European countries, using data from Eurostat. In this case, respondents answer to the question “would you say that most people can be trusted?” using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, results are consistent \u2013 countries with high interpersonal trust in the World Value Survey also have high trust ratings in the Eurostat survey. Yet heterogeneity on the more granular scale used by Eurostat is somewhat smaller.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-rating-of-trust-in-others-selected-countries\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h4>How much do people in developed countries trust public institutions?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The OECD, using Eurostat data, provides estimates of trust in public institutions that are comparable to estimates of ‘trust in others’ (i.e. interpersonal trust). The following visualization, taken from the OECD report <a href=\"http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en\">How’s life? (2015) </a>, shows average ratings of trust in (i) the political system, (ii) the police, and (iii) the legal system. These figures can be directly compared to those on interpersonal trust discussed in the <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-rating-of-trust-in-others-selected-countries\">visualization above</a>. In both cases figures rely on Eurostat data from the same survey, so respondents here also rate trust in institutions using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low \u2013 in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The data suggests a broad correlation between trust in others, and trust in the different public institutions. Specifically, northern Europe (and Switzerland) report higher levels of trust, while southern and eastern Europe (and France) report lower levels across the board.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Mean trust in public institutions, European countries, 2013 \u2013 Figure 3.14 in the OECD report <a href=\"http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en\">How’s life? (2015) </a>{ref}Eurostat data. Response options range from 0 (\u2018\u2018no trust at all\u2019\u2019) to 10 (\u2018\u2018Complete trust\u2019\u2019).{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"378\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions-750x378.png\" alt=\"OECD(2015)_TrustInstitutions\" class=\"wp-image-8356\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions-750x378.png 750w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions-150x76.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions-400x202.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions-768x387.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h4>People in most European countries trust the police more than they trust each other</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>We mentioned above that the police is trusted more than other public institutions in most European countries. But do people in these countries trust the police more than they trust each other? This question is relevant, because trust in the police can become, in certain situations, an important substitute for interpersonal trust. This visualization plots Eurostat figures for trust in the police (y-axis) and trust in others (x-axis). The size of each dot represents national income (PPP-adjusted GDP per capita). We can see that there is a clear positive correlation; and in the majority of countries people report the same or higher trust in the police than trust in others. The clear exceptions are Greece, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and Slovenia \u2013 these are the countries that lie significantly below a hypothetical line with slope one (i.e. the line below which trust in others is higher than trust in the police). Denmark and the Netherlands, both with higher levels of trust than the mentioned countries, are also somewhat below this hypothetical line.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-in-others-vs-trust-in-police\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h4>Trust in OECD governments has been going up in recent years</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>From an inter-temporal perspective, data suggests that trust in public institutions has been going up recently in OECD countries. This visualization shows the OECD-average estimate of trust in governments over the period 2010\u20132020. The percentage of the population reporting confidence in the national government has increased from 35% in 2013 to 46% in 2020.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oecd-average-trust-in-governments\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h4>How much do people trust others, their government, journalists, and science?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The Wellcome Global Monitor is the world\u2019s largest study into how people around the world think and feel about science and major health challenges. It surveys over 140,000 people from more than 140 countries.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-neighborhood?country=HUN~MMR~USA~GBR~JPN~RUS~IND~CHN~NGA~IDN~BRA~FRA~DEU\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-who-trust-government\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-journalists-country?country=USA~RUS~IND~CHN~GBR~JPN~FRA~DEU~ITA~IDN~NGA~SWE\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-science?country=USA~GBR~CHN~IND~RUS~JPN~FRA~BRA~DEU~IDN~NGA~SWE\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h3>Country-specific surveys</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>In the US, trust in the federal government is at historically low levels</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The Pew Research Center recently constructed a series of long-run estimates of trust in the government for the US, staring 1958. This visualization uses their data, to plot the share of people who say they can trust the government in Washington always or most of the time.{ref}The survey asked the question “How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right?” Answers included “Just about always”, “Most of the time”, or “Only some of the time”.{/ref} As it can be seen there are some clear patterns associated with political cycles, but in the long-run there is a negative trend. Today, trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels. The Pew Research Center has a <a href=\"http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/public-trust-in-government-1958-2015/\">dedicated website</a>, with many interesting visualizations \u2013 including disaggregated trends by ethnicity and political affiliation. Further details and analysis available in the report <a href=\"http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/11/11-23-2015-Governance-release.pdf\">Beyond Distrust: How Americans View their Government</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/public-trust-in-government\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h4>In the US, people trust each other less now than 40 years ago</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>In the US, the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972. To our knowledge, this is the longest available time-series on interpersonal trust estimates in the world. This visualization uses this source to show the evolution of trust in the US. Specifically, this plot shows the share of respondents agreeing with the statement “most people can be trusted” in the surveys 1972-2014.{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked <em>“Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?”</em>. Available replies are “Can trust”, “Cannot trust”, “Depends” and “Don’t Know”. We report figures of “Can trust” as a share of all answers. {/ref} As we can see, there are short-term fluctuations, but people in the US seem to trust each other less today than 40 years ago.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-attitudes-in-the-us\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h4>In the UK, trust in others has remained relatively stable over the last couple of decades \u2013 but other measures of social capital have not</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Trust is a key element of social capital \u2013 but it is not the only one. Data from the UK suggests that different aspects of social capital change in time at different rates. This chart, from the <a href=\"http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk\">Centre for Social Investigation</a> at Nuffield College, Oxford, shows that in the UK trust in other people fluctuates year by year, but there is no trend over the last couple of decades. This is consistent with the figures from the World Value Survey, where the UK shows little variation between the 1998 and 2009 surveys. Interestingly, however, associations with voluntary organisations declined significantly over the same period \u2013 the chart shows that the percentage of the UK population that is active with one or more organization fell from 52% in 1993 to 43% in 2012.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Trends in four measures of social capital, UK, 1991-2013 \u2013 Figure 2 in Centre for Social Investigation (2015){ref} This graph is taken from the report <a href=\"http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/CSI_15_The_uneven_distribution.pdf\">CSI 15: The uneven distribution and decline of social capital in Britain</a>. The reported underlying data sources are the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the UK Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS), the Citizenship/ Community Life Survey (CLS), and the Health Survey for England (HSE){/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"410\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital-750x410.png\" alt=\"CSI15_BritishSocialCapital\" class=\"wp-image-8414\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital-750x410.png 750w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital-150x82.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital-400x219.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital-768x420.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h4>In the UK trust in experts has mostly increased</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The chart shows data on trust in various groups of experts in the UK. The data is based on surveys that go back to 1983.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are large differences between professions \u2013 trust in journalists is low, while trust in professors, teachers, and doctors is high.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For all groups \u2013 with the exception of clergy/priests \u2013 the levels of trust have inceased snce the first surveys were conducted.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"800\" height=\"406\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-800x406.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-42980\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-800x406.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-400x203.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-150x76.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-768x390.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-1536x780.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-2048x1040.png 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<h4>In Sweden, trust is not only very high, but also remarkably stable</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The data from Eurostat and the World Value Survey shows that Sweden is one of the countries with the highest levels of trust globally. This visualization from the <a href=\"http://som.gu.se\">SOM institute</a> \u2013 an independent survey research organisation at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden \u2013, shows that interpersonal trust in Sweden is not only high, but also very stable across time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this visualisation we see the degree of trust in others, raging from 0 to 10. We can see that estimates are very persistent \u2013 the share of individuals rating trust as low (0-3), medium (4-6) and high (7-10) has not changed significantly over the last two decades.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Trust in people, Sweden, 1996-2015 \u2013 SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at <a href=\"http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf\">http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf</a>{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"462\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople-750x462.png\" alt=\"SOM_SwedishTrustPeople\" class=\"wp-image-8418\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople-750x462.png 750w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople-150x92.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople-400x247.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople-768x473.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<p>The data from the SOM in Sweden also allows an inter-temporal analysis of other measures of trust. This visualization shows estimates of general trust in politicians. In this case stability is reflected in the fact that political cycles are not associated with accentuated fluctuations. This seems to contrast with the data from the US, where public trust in government seems to be highly cyclical.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>General trust in politicians, Sweden, 1998-2015 \u2013 SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at <a href=\"http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf\">http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf</a>{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"450\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians-750x450.png\" alt=\"SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians\" class=\"wp-image-8419\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians-750x450.png 750w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians-150x90.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians-400x240.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians-768x461.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians.png 1018w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h3>Trust and culture</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>Do trust attitudes correlate with religion?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>A number of academic studies have explored the link between religious beliefs and self-reported trust attitudes. This figure, from Guiso et al. (2006),{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). <a href=\"https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23\">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} summarizes the results from one such study using data from the World Values Survey. Specifically, the bars in this figure represent the effect of religious affiliation on trust, in percent of the sample mean of trust relative to “no religious affiliation”. The reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). Since the data is available for the same country over several years, the authors also control for country-specific time-invariant characteristics (the so-called country fixed effects).</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Taking these results at face value, the reported effects suggest that being raised religiously raises the level of trust by 2.6 percent; and regularly attending religious services (the author’s definition of being “religious” for the purpose of the figure), raises the level of trust by another 20 percent. Similarly, these results suggest that the effect of religion differs across denominations: self-reported Catholic and Protestant religious affiliation has a positive effect on trust; while Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist affiliation does not.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>As usual, these results have to be interpreted with caution, since reported figures do not control for unobservable time-varying factors that may simultaneously affect attitudes towards religion and trust; in other words, it is likely that there are unaccounted sources of bias that undermine the causal interpretation of the coefficients. Indeed, other studies using attitudinal survey questions on trust have found different results. For instance, Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., & Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from <a href=\"http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&rep=rep1&type=pdf\">here</a>{/ref} use data from the General Social Survey in the US, and find that religious affiliation is not statistically related to trust after controlling for further characteristics, such as whether survey respondents had a history of traumatic experiences.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Effect of religious affiliation on trust relative to no religious affiliation \u2013 Guiso et al. (2006){ref}Reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). The underlying source of the data used for the regressions is the European Values Survey and World Values Survey 1981\u201384, 1990\u201393, 1995\u201397. Further details from the authors: Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). <a href=\"https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23\">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"434\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion-750x434.png\" alt=\"GuisoEtal(2006)_TrustReligion\" class=\"wp-image-8362\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion-750x434.png 750w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion-150x87.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion-400x231.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion-768x444.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h3>Trust and economic outcomes</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>What is the relationship between trust and GDP?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>In a much cited article, Arrow (1972){ref}Arrow, K. J. (1972). Gifts and exchanges. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 343-362.{/ref} says that “Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust, certainly any transaction conducted over a period of time.”</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The extent to which trust is linked to economic development has been the subject of many academic papers in the economics literature on growth (see Guiso et al. 2006,{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). <a href=\"https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23\">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} Algan and Cahuc 2010,{ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). <a href=\"https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=\">Inherited trust and growth</a>. The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} and the references therein). A common way to get a first-order approximation of this relationship is to estimate the correlations between trust and GDP per capita. This visualization provides evidence of this correlation, by plotting trust estimates from the World Value Survey against GDP per capita. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country. You can learn more about measures of national income in our <a href=\"http://ourworldindata.org/gdp-data/\">entry on GDP data</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>As it can be seen, there is a very strong positive relationship. Most academic studies find that this relationship remains after controlling for further characteristics. And similar results can also be obtained by looking at other measures of economic outcomes. Looking at outcomes across individuals, Guiso et al. (2006), for instance, report that trust has a positive and statistically significant correlation with the probability of becoming an entrepreneur, even after controlling for education, age and individual income. Their results also hold if religious affiliation of the respondents’ ancestors is used as a proxy for trust \u2013 they thus argue that, since ancestors’ religion correlates with respondents’ trust attitudes, this instrumental variable approach can be taken as evidence that the estimated relationship goes in the suggested direction (i.e. that trust <em>leads</em> to entrepreneurship, rather than the other way around).</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other studies using instrumental variables have also found similarly large effects. Algan and Cahuc (2010){ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). <a href=\"https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=\">Inherited trust and growth</a>. The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} predict that, according to their estimates, African countries would have a five-fold increase in GDP per capita if they had the same level of inherited social attitudes as Sweden, after controlling for lagged GDP per capita, contemporaneous political environment and time-invariant country characteristics.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Algan and Cahuc (2010) show that inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is significantly influenced by the country of origin and the timing of arrival of their forebears. This is their instrumental variable: the inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is used as a time-varying measure of inherited trust in the country of origin. This approach allows the authors to control for country fixed effects and interpret the effect of trust on growth <em>causally</em>. You can read a summary of their findings and approach in a <a href=\"http://voxeu.org/article/trust-and-economic-development\">voxeu.org article written by the researchers</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nunn and Wantchekon (2011){ref}Nunn, N., & Wantchekon, L. (2011). <a href=\"https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/11986331/nunn-slave-trade.pdf?sequence=1\">The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa</a>. The American Economic Review, 101(7), 3221-3252. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41408736{/ref} provide evidence to explain mistrust in Africa: they show that current differences in trust levels within Africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades. More specifically, they show that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today \u2013 and using a variety of different econometric strategies, they claim that this relationship is causal.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Trust vs. GDP per capita, 2014 (or latest available data) {ref}Trust data corresponds to share of respondents in the World Value Survey agreeing with the statement “most people can be trusted”. Possible answers include “Most people can be trusted”, “Don’t Know” and “Can’t be too careful”. GDP per capita data from Penn World Table.{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"598\" height=\"550\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-598x550.png\" alt=\"Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita\" class=\"wp-image-8422\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-598x550.png 598w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-150x138.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-400x368.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-768x706.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 598px) 100vw, 598px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h4>What is the relationship between trust and income inequality?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Cross-country data, as well as within-country data, suggest that economic inequality is negatively related to trust. This visualization provides evidence of this relationship: it shows a scatter plot of trust estimates from the World Value Survey against income inequality measured by the Gini index. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country, with colors representing different world regions and dot sizes representing population. A Gini index of 0 reflects perfect equality, so the observed negative correlation in this graph implies that higher inequality is associated with lower trust. In other words, we can see that countries with higher income inequality also tend to report lower levels of trust. You can read more about income inequality and the Gini index in our entry on <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-prosperity/income-inequality/#the-gini-coefficient\">income inequality</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This negative relationship can be explained through various mechanisms: social ties may imply that people are more willing to trust those who are similar to themselves, or higher inequality may lead to conflicts over resources. The empirical work from Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., & Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from <a href=\"http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&rep=rep1&type=pdf\">here</a>{/ref} provides evidence in support of the former mechanism. Jordahl, H. (2007){ref}Jordahl, H. (2007). <a href=\"http://www.ifn.se/Wfiles/wp/wp715.pdf\">Inequality and Trust</a>. Working Paper Series 715, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.{/ref} provides a discussion of these and other possible mechanisms.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/interpersonal-trust-vs-income-inequality\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h3>Trust and social outcomes</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>Is there a link between education and trust?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the reasons to justify government intervention in the market for education, is that education generates positive externalities.{ref}That positive externalities justify government intervention in the provision of education is essentially an efficiency argument. The logic is that individuals may not spend enough on education because they fail to internalize the positive effect that their education has on other people. But there are, of course, also equity arguments to justify government intervention in the provision of education \u2013 for instance, reducing inequality in education may be of intrinsic value, or may be instrumental in reducing inequalities in other outcomes.{/ref} This essentially means that investing in education yields both private and social returns. Private returns to education include higher wages and better employment prospects (as we discuss in our entry on <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/skill-premium-income-by-education/\">Skill Premium</a>). Social return include pro-social behaviour (e.g. volunteering, political participation) and interpersonal trust.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This chart uses OECD results from the Survey of Adult Skills to show how self-reported trust in others correlates with educational attainment. More precisely, this chart plots the percentage-point difference in the likelihood of reporting to trust others, by education level of respondents. Those individuals with upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education are taken as the reference group, so the percentage point difference is expressed in relation to this group. As we can see, in all countries those individuals with tertiary education were by far the group most likely to report trusting others.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And in almost every country, those with post-secondary non-tertiary education were more likely to trust others than those with primary or lower secondary education. The OECD’s report <a href=\"http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1\">Education at a Glance (2015)</a> provides similar descriptive evidence for other social outcomes. The conclusion is that adults with higher qualifications are more likely to report desirable social outcomes, including good or excellent health, participation in volunteer activities, interpersonal trust, and political efficacy. And these results hold after controlling for literacy, gender, age and monthly earnings.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Likelihood of reporting to trust others, by educational attainment, OECD 2012 \u2013 Figure A8.4 in <a href=\"http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1\">Education at a Glance (2015)</a>{ref}As per the source notes: “Percentage-point difference reflects the relative change of reporting to trust others compared to the reference category. For example, in Norway, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education reporting to trust others increases by 20 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education. Similarly, after accounting for literacy proficiency, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education increases by 16 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education.”{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"441\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust-750x441.png\" alt=\"OECD_Education_Trust\" class=\"wp-image-8134\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust-750x441.png 750w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust-150x88.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust-400x235.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust-768x451.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h4>Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Social cohesion is often defined as the capacity of a country to support peaceful collective decision making. This pair of plots, from the World Development Report (2013),{ref}<a href=\"http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf\">World Development Report 2013: Jobs</a>. Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0.{/ref} show the correlation between the index of peaceful collective decision making, and two key measures of social cohesion at the micro level: trust and civic engagement. The index of peaceful collective decision making is a quantitative indicator that, for each country, aggregates data on political stability, the absence of violence, and voice and accountability.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The figure shows a strong positive relationship: countries where people are more likely to report trusting others, are also countries where there is less violence and more political stability and accountability.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Share reporting trust in people and index of civic engagement vs index of peaceful collective decision making \u2013 World Development Report (2013){ref} <a href=\"http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf\">World Development Report 2013: Jobs</a>. Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0. The original sources used by the World Development Report 2013 are the World Values Survey 2005 (database), World Values Survey Association, Stockholm; Worldwide Governance Indicators 2005. The original source notes: The analysis includes 56 countries (panel a) and 49 countries (panel b). \u201cIndex of peaceful collective decision making\u201d is an average of indicators of \u201cvoice and accountability\u201d and \u201cpolitical stability and the absence of violence\u201d from the Worldwide Governance Indicators. \u201cIndex of civic engagement\u201d is the average of responses to questions from the World Values Survey on (a) active membership in associations; (b) whether the respondent participated or would participate in a demonstration; and (c) whether the respondent would sign a petition. This work is available under the <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0\">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)</a>.{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-\u2013-world-development-report-20130.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"370\" src=\"http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-\u2013-world-development-report-20130-750x370.png\" alt=\"Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making \u2013\u00a0World Development Report (2013)0\" class=\"wp-image-4354\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-\u2013-world-development-report-20130-750x370.png 750w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-\u2013-world-development-report-20130-150x74.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-\u2013-world-development-report-20130-400x197.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-\u2013-world-development-report-20130.png 1127w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h2>Data Quality & Measurement</h2>\n\n\n\n<h4>How sensitive are estimates of interpersonal trust from attitudinal survey questions to changes in surveying methodologies?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Attitudinal survey questions provide the main source of data to estimate interpersonal trust attitudes. Available evidence for countries with multiple such estimates, suggest that results are robust to the specific surveying methodologies. This scatter plot bears this out, by comparing cross-country estimates from different surveys. Specifically, this figure plots the estimated interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey, against interpersonal trust levels as measured by the European Social Survey and the Afrobarometer Survey. The resulting correlation is positive and very high.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey and European Values Study, and the European Social Survey and Afrobarometer Survey \u2013 Inglehart & Welzel (2010){ref} The source is Inglehart & Welzel (2010) – <a href=\"https://nnov.hse.ru/data/2011/03/21/1211300861/ChangingMassPriorities.pdf\">Changing Mass Priorities: The Link between Modernization and Democracy</a>. Reflections, June 2010, Vol. 8/No. 2.. N = 28 r = .92{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"557\" height=\"550\" src=\"http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-557x550.png\" alt=\"Inglehart and Welzel 2010 Interpersonal trust levels\" class=\"wp-image-5987\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-557x550.png 557w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-150x148.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-400x395.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-32x32.png 32w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-64x64.png 64w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-96x96.png 96w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels.png 1345w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 557px) 100vw, 557px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h4>Do trust estimates from attitudinal survey questions predict trusting <em>behaviour</em>?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>In an academic paper, Glaeser et al. (2000){ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). <a href=\"https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence\">Measuring trust</a>. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref} examine the predictive power of two types of survey questions: questions about trusting attitudes and questions about past trusting behavior. The authors examine the predictive power of these questions by comparing survey answers with actual trusting behaviour in an incentivised experimental setting with monetary rewards. They show that, while measures of past trusting behavior are better than the abstract attitudinal questions in predicting subjects’ experimental choices, in general terms they are both weak predictors of trust. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict <em>trustworthiness</em>. In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves.<br><br></p>\n\n\n\n<h2>Data Sources</h2>\n\n\n\n<h4>OECD \u2013 Eurostat</h4>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Data:</strong> OECD data on trust is published in the <em>Society at a Glance – OECD Social Indicators</em>. This source relies on the estimates from Eurostat, specifically the EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC)</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> OECD member states</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong> Recent years</li><li><strong>Available at:</strong> online <a href=\"http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/society-at-a-glance-2011/trust_soc_glance-2011-26-en\">here</a>.</li></ul>\n\n\n\n<h4>The World Value Survey (WVS)</h4>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Data:</strong> Data on trust and many other social and cultural characteristics from cross-national and time-series surveys</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> The WVS covers almost 100 societies (nearly 90% of the world\u2019s population). But not all countries have observations in each survey wave.</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong>  Several waves of surveys from 1981 onwards</li><li><strong>Available at:</strong> <a href=\"http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp\">http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp</a></li></ul>\n\n\n\n<h4>US General Social Survey</h4>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Data:</strong> Time-series data on trust and many other social and cultural characteristics</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> US</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong> Yearly surveys since 1972</li><li><strong>Available at:</strong> <a href=\"https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org\">https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org</a></li></ul>\n", "protected": false }, "excerpt": { "rendered": "Trust is essential for community, wellbeing, and effective cooperation. How does trust vary between different societies and locations and what matters for levels of trust?", "protected": false }, "date_gmt": "2016-07-22T20:55:11", "modified": "2023-03-13T17:36:28", "template": "", "categories": [ 44, 52, 60 ], "menu_order": 357, "ping_status": "closed", "authors_name": [ "Esteban Ortiz-Ospina" ], "modified_gmt": "2023-03-13T17:36:28", "comment_status": "closed", "featured_media": 9565, "featured_media_paths": { "thumbnail": "/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-1-150x138.png", "medium_large": "/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-1-768x706.png" } }

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Trust

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<p>Trust is a fundamental element of social capital – a key contributor to sustaining well-being outcomes, including economic development. In this entry we discuss available data on trust, as measured by attitudinal survey questions; that is, estimates from surveys asking about trusting attitudes.</p>   <p>Global comparisons of trust attitudes around the world today suggest very large time-persistent cross-country heterogeneity. In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden more than 60% of respondents in the World Value Survey agree that "most people can be trusted". And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case.</p>   <p>Data from European countries shows that average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low – in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland. On the other hand, trust in the police is notably high, and in the majority of European countries people trust the police more than they trust each other.</p>   <p>Long-run data from the US, where the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972, suggests that people trust each other less today than 40 years ago. This decline in interpersonal trust in the US has been coupled with a long-run reduction in public trust in government – according to estimates compiled by the Pew Research Center since 1958, today trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels.</p>   <p>Interpersonal trust attitudes correlate strongly with religious affiliation and upbringing. Some studies have shown that this strong positive relationship remains after controlling for several survey-respondent characteristics.{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref}</p>   <p> This, in turn, has led researchers to use religion as a proxy for trust, in order to estimate the extent to which economic outcomes depend on trust attitudes. Estimates from these and other studies using an instrumental-variable approach, suggest that trust has a causal impact on economic outcomes.{ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=">Inherited trust and growth</a>. The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} This suggests that the remarkable cross-country heterogeneity in trust that we observe today, can explain a significant part of the historical differences in cross-country income levels.</p>   <p>Measures of trust from attitudinal survey questions remain the most common source of data on trust. Yet academic studies have shown that these measures of trust are generally weak predictors of actual trusting behaviour. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict <em>trustworthiness</em>. In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves.{ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence">Measuring trust</a>. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref}</p>   <h3>How do countries around the world compare in terms of interpersonal trust?</h3>   <p>The World Value Survey allows cross-country comparisons of self-reported trust attitudes. This visualization shows estimates of the share of survey respondents agreeing with the statement "most people can be trusted".{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked <em>"Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?" </em>. Possible answers include "Most people can be trusted", "Don't Know" and "Can't be too careful". We report figures of "Most people can be trusted" as a share of all answers. {/ref}</p>   <p>In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden, more than 60% of respondents agree that most people can be trusted. And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case.</p>   <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/self-reported-trust-attitudes?tab=map" width="300" height="150"></iframe>   <h4>How large are cross-country differences in estimates of interpersonal trust in Europe?</h4>   <p>The results from the World Value Survey discussed above show that there are very large, time-persistent cross-country differences in the share of people who report trusting others, even within European countries. But are these cross-country differences similarly large if we look at average ratings of trust in a scale that allows for differences in intensity? The following visualization shows the average rating of trust in others across European countries, using data from Eurostat. In this case, respondents answer to the question "would you say that most people can be trusted?" using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, results are consistent – countries with high interpersonal trust in the World Value Survey also have high trust ratings in the Eurostat survey. Yet heterogeneity on the more granular scale used by Eurostat is somewhat smaller.</p>   <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-rating-of-trust-in-others-selected-countries" width="300" height="150"></iframe>   <h4>How much do people in developed countries trust public institutions?</h4>   <p>The OECD, using Eurostat data, provides estimates of trust in public institutions that are comparable to estimates of 'trust in others' (i.e. interpersonal trust). The following visualization, taken from the OECD report <a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en">How's life? (2015) </a>, shows average ratings of trust in (i) the political system, (ii) the police, and (iii) the legal system. These figures can be directly compared to those on interpersonal trust discussed in the <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-rating-of-trust-in-others-selected-countries">visualization above</a>. In both cases figures rely on Eurostat data from the same survey, so respondents here also rate trust in institutions using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low – in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland</p>   <p>The data suggests a broad correlation between trust in others, and trust in the different public institutions. Specifically, northern Europe (and Switzerland) report higher levels of trust, while southern and eastern Europe (and France) report lower levels across the board.</p>   <h6>Mean trust in public institutions, European countries, 2013 – Figure 3.14 in the OECD report <a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en">How's life? (2015) </a>{ref}Eurostat data. Response options range from 0 (‘‘no trust at all’’) to 10 (‘‘Complete trust’’).{/ref}</h6>   <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions.png"><img src="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions-750x378.png" alt="OECD(2015)_TrustInstitutions" class="wp-image-8356"/></a></figure></div>   <h4>People in most European countries trust the police more than they trust each other</h4>   <p>We mentioned above that the police is trusted more than other public institutions in most European countries. But do people in these countries trust the police more than they trust each other? This question is relevant, because trust in the police can become, in certain situations, an important substitute for interpersonal trust. This visualization plots Eurostat figures for trust in the police (y-axis) and trust in others (x-axis). The size of each dot represents national income (PPP-adjusted GDP per capita). We can see that there is a clear positive correlation; and in the majority of countries people report the same or higher trust in the police than trust in others. The clear exceptions are Greece, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and Slovenia – these are the countries that lie significantly below a hypothetical line with slope one (i.e. the line below which trust in others is higher than trust in the police). Denmark and the Netherlands, both with higher levels of trust than the mentioned countries, are also somewhat below this hypothetical line.</p>   <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-in-others-vs-trust-in-police" width="300" height="150"></iframe>   <h4>Trust in OECD governments has been going up in recent years</h4>   <p>From an inter-temporal perspective, data suggests that trust in public institutions has been going up recently in OECD countries. This visualization shows the OECD-average estimate of trust in governments over the period 2010–2020. The percentage of the population reporting confidence in the national government has increased from 35% in 2013 to 46% in 2020.</p>   <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oecd-average-trust-in-governments" width="300" height="150"></iframe>   <h4>How much do people trust others, their government, journalists, and science?</h4>   <p>The Wellcome Global Monitor is the world’s largest study into how people around the world think and feel about science and major health challenges. It surveys over 140,000 people from more than 140 countries.</p>   <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-neighborhood?country=HUN~MMR~USA~GBR~JPN~RUS~IND~CHN~NGA~IDN~BRA~FRA~DEU" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe>   <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-who-trust-government" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe>   <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-journalists-country?country=USA~RUS~IND~CHN~GBR~JPN~FRA~DEU~ITA~IDN~NGA~SWE" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe>   <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-science?country=USA~GBR~CHN~IND~RUS~JPN~FRA~BRA~DEU~IDN~NGA~SWE" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe>   <h3>Country-specific surveys</h3>   <h4>In the US, trust in the federal government is at historically low levels</h4>   <p>The Pew Research Center recently constructed a series of long-run estimates of trust in the government for the US, staring 1958. This visualization uses their data, to plot the share of people who say they can trust the government in Washington always or most of the time.{ref}The survey asked the question "How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right?" Answers included "Just about always", "Most of the time", or "Only some of the time".{/ref} As it can be seen there are some clear patterns associated with political cycles, but in the long-run there is a negative trend. Today, trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels. The Pew Research Center has a <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/public-trust-in-government-1958-2015/">dedicated website</a>, with many interesting visualizations – including disaggregated trends by ethnicity and political affiliation. Further details and analysis available in the report <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/11/11-23-2015-Governance-release.pdf">Beyond Distrust: How Americans View their Government</a>.</p>   <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/public-trust-in-government" width="300" height="150"></iframe>   <h4>In the US, people trust each other less now than 40 years ago</h4>   <p>In the US, the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972. To our knowledge, this is the longest available time-series on interpersonal trust estimates in the world. This visualization uses this source to show the evolution of trust in the US. Specifically, this plot shows the share of respondents agreeing with the statement "most people can be trusted" in the surveys 1972-2014.{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked <em>"Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?"</em>. Available replies are "Can trust", "Cannot trust", "Depends" and "Don't Know". We report figures of "Can trust" as a share of all answers. {/ref} As we can see, there are short-term fluctuations, but people in the US seem to trust each other less today than 40 years ago.</p>   <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-attitudes-in-the-us" width="300" height="150"></iframe>   <h4>In the UK, trust in others has remained relatively stable over the last couple of decades – but other measures of social capital have not</h4>   <p>Trust is a key element of social capital – but it is not the only one. Data from the UK suggests that different aspects of social capital change in time at different rates. This chart, from the <a href="http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk">Centre for Social Investigation</a> at Nuffield College, Oxford, shows that in the UK trust in other people fluctuates year by year, but there is no trend over the last couple of decades. This is consistent with the figures from the World Value Survey, where the UK shows little variation between the 1998 and 2009 surveys. Interestingly, however, associations with voluntary organisations declined significantly over the same period – the chart shows that the percentage of the UK population that is active with one or more organization fell from 52% in 1993 to 43% in 2012.</p>   <h6>Trends in four measures of social capital, UK, 1991-2013 – Figure 2 in Centre for Social Investigation (2015){ref} This graph is taken from the report <a href="http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/CSI_15_The_uneven_distribution.pdf">CSI 15: The uneven distribution and decline of social capital in Britain</a>. The reported underlying data sources are the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the UK Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS), the Citizenship/ Community Life Survey (CLS), and the Health Survey for England (HSE){/ref}</h6>   <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital.png"><img src="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital-750x410.png" alt="CSI15_BritishSocialCapital" class="wp-image-8414"/></a></figure></div>   <h4>In the UK trust in experts has mostly increased</h4>   <p>The chart shows data on trust in various groups of experts in the UK. The data is based on surveys that go back to 1983.</p>   <p>There are large differences between professions – trust in journalists is low, while trust in professors, teachers, and doctors is high.</p>   <p>For all groups – with the exception of clergy/priests – the levels of trust have inceased snce the first surveys were conducted.</p>   <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-800x406.png" alt="" class="wp-image-42980"/></figure>   <h4>In Sweden, trust is not only very high, but also remarkably stable</h4>   <p>The data from Eurostat and the World Value Survey shows that Sweden is one of the countries with the highest levels of trust globally. This visualization from the <a href="http://som.gu.se">SOM institute</a> – an independent survey research organisation at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden –, shows that interpersonal trust in Sweden is not only high, but also very stable across time.</p>   <p>In this visualisation we see the degree of trust in others, raging from 0 to 10. We can see that estimates are very persistent – the share of individuals rating trust as low (0-3), medium (4-6) and high (7-10) has not changed significantly over the last two decades.</p>   <h6>Trust in people, Sweden, 1996-2015 – SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at <a href="http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf">http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf</a>{/ref}</h6>   <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople.png"><img src="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople-750x462.png" alt="SOM_SwedishTrustPeople" class="wp-image-8418"/></a></figure></div>   <p>The data from the SOM in Sweden also allows an inter-temporal analysis of other measures of trust. This visualization shows estimates of general trust in politicians. In this case stability is reflected in the fact that political cycles are not associated with accentuated fluctuations. This seems to contrast with the data from the US, where public trust in government seems to be highly cyclical.</p>   <h6>General trust in politicians, Sweden, 1998-2015 – SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at <a href="http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf">http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf</a>{/ref}</h6>   <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians.png"><img src="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians-750x450.png" alt="SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians" class="wp-image-8419"/></a></figure></div>   <h3>Trust and culture</h3>   <h4>Do trust attitudes correlate with religion?</h4>   <p>A number of academic studies have explored the link between religious beliefs and self-reported trust attitudes. This figure, from Guiso et al. (2006),{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} summarizes the results from one such study using data from the World Values Survey. Specifically, the bars in this figure represent the effect of religious affiliation on trust, in percent of the sample mean of trust relative to "no religious affiliation". The reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). Since the data is available for the same country over several years, the authors also control for country-specific time-invariant characteristics (the so-called country fixed effects).</p>   <p>Taking these results at face value, the reported effects suggest that being raised religiously raises the level of trust by 2.6 percent; and regularly attending religious services (the author's definition of being "religious" for the purpose of the figure), raises the level of trust by another 20 percent. Similarly, these results suggest that the effect of religion differs across denominations: self-reported Catholic and Protestant religious affiliation has a positive effect on trust; while Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist affiliation does not.</p>   <p>As usual, these results have to be interpreted with caution, since reported figures do not control for unobservable time-varying factors that may simultaneously affect attitudes towards religion and trust; in other words, it is likely that there are unaccounted sources of bias that undermine the causal interpretation of the coefficients. Indeed, other studies using attitudinal survey questions on trust have found different results. For instance, Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., & Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&rep=rep1&type=pdf">here</a>{/ref} use data from the General Social Survey in the US, and find that religious affiliation is not statistically related to trust after controlling for further characteristics, such as whether survey respondents had a history of traumatic experiences.</p>   <h6>Effect of religious affiliation on trust relative to no religious affiliation – Guiso et al. (2006){ref}Reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). The underlying source of the data used for the regressions is the European Values Survey and World Values Survey 1981–84, 1990–93, 1995–97. Further details from the authors: Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref}</h6>   <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion.png"><img src="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion-750x434.png" alt="GuisoEtal(2006)_TrustReligion" class="wp-image-8362"/></a></figure></div>   <h3>Trust and economic outcomes</h3>   <h4>What is the relationship between trust and GDP?</h4>   <p>In a much cited article, Arrow (1972){ref}Arrow, K. J. (1972). Gifts and exchanges. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 343-362.{/ref} says that "Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust, certainly any transaction conducted over a period of time."</p>   <p>The extent to which trust is linked to economic development has been the subject of many academic papers in the economics literature on growth (see Guiso et al. 2006,{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} Algan and Cahuc 2010,{ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=">Inherited trust and growth</a>. The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} and the references therein). A common way to get a first-order approximation of this relationship is to estimate the correlations between trust and GDP per capita. This visualization provides evidence of this correlation, by plotting trust estimates from the World Value Survey against GDP per capita. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country. You can learn more about measures of national income in our <a href="http://ourworldindata.org/gdp-data/">entry on GDP data</a>.</p>   <p>As it can be seen, there is a very strong positive relationship. Most academic studies find that this relationship remains after controlling for further characteristics. And similar results can also be obtained by looking at other measures of economic outcomes. Looking at outcomes across individuals, Guiso et al. (2006), for instance, report that trust has a positive and statistically significant correlation with the probability of becoming an entrepreneur, even after controlling for education, age and individual income. Their results also hold if religious affiliation of the respondents' ancestors is used as a proxy for trust – they thus argue that, since ancestors' religion correlates with respondents' trust attitudes, this instrumental variable approach can be taken as evidence that the estimated relationship goes in the suggested direction (i.e. that trust <em>leads</em> to entrepreneurship, rather than the other way around).</p>   <p>Other studies using instrumental variables have also found similarly large effects. Algan and Cahuc (2010){ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=">Inherited trust and growth</a>. The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} predict that, according to their estimates, African countries would have a five-fold increase in GDP per capita if they had the same level of inherited social attitudes as Sweden, after controlling for lagged GDP per capita, contemporaneous political environment and time-invariant country characteristics.</p>   <p>Algan and Cahuc (2010) show that inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is significantly influenced by the country of origin and the timing of arrival of their forebears. This is their instrumental variable: the inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is used as a time-varying measure of inherited trust in the country of origin. This approach allows the authors to control for country fixed effects and interpret the effect of trust on growth <em>causally</em>. You can read a summary of their findings and approach in a <a href="http://voxeu.org/article/trust-and-economic-development">voxeu.org article written by the researchers</a>.</p>   <p>Nunn and Wantchekon (2011){ref}Nunn, N., & Wantchekon, L. (2011). <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/11986331/nunn-slave-trade.pdf?sequence=1">The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa</a>. The American Economic Review, 101(7), 3221-3252. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41408736{/ref} provide evidence to explain mistrust in Africa: they show that current differences in trust levels within Africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades. More specifically, they show that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today – and using a variety of different econometric strategies, they claim that this relationship is causal.</p>   <h6>Trust vs. GDP per capita, 2014 (or latest available data) {ref}Trust data corresponds to share of respondents in the World Value Survey agreeing with the statement "most people can be trusted". Possible answers include "Most people can be trusted", "Don't Know" and "Can't be too careful". GDP per capita data from Penn World Table.{/ref}</h6>   <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita.png"><img src="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-598x550.png" alt="Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita" class="wp-image-8422"/></a></figure></div>   <h4>What is the relationship between trust and income inequality?</h4>   <p>Cross-country data, as well as within-country data, suggest that economic inequality is negatively related to trust. This visualization provides evidence of this relationship: it shows a scatter plot of trust estimates from the World Value Survey against income inequality measured by the Gini index. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country, with colors representing different world regions and dot sizes representing population. A Gini index of 0 reflects perfect equality, so the observed negative correlation in this graph implies that higher inequality is associated with lower trust. In other words, we can see that countries with higher income inequality also tend to report lower levels of trust. You can read more about income inequality and the Gini index in our entry on <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-prosperity/income-inequality/#the-gini-coefficient">income inequality</a>.</p>   <p>This negative relationship can be explained through various mechanisms: social ties may imply that people are more willing to trust those who are similar to themselves, or higher inequality may lead to conflicts over resources. The empirical work from Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., & Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&rep=rep1&type=pdf">here</a>{/ref} provides evidence in support of the former mechanism. Jordahl, H. (2007){ref}Jordahl, H. (2007). <a href="http://www.ifn.se/Wfiles/wp/wp715.pdf">Inequality and Trust</a>. Working Paper Series 715, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.{/ref} provides a discussion of these and other possible mechanisms.</p>   <iframe style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;" src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/interpersonal-trust-vs-income-inequality" width="300" height="150"></iframe>   <h3>Trust and social outcomes</h3>   <h4>Is there a link between education and trust?</h4>   <p>One of the reasons to justify government intervention in the market for education, is that education generates positive externalities.{ref}That positive externalities justify government intervention in the provision of education is essentially an efficiency argument. The logic is that individuals may not spend enough on education because they fail to internalize the positive effect that their education has on other people. But there are, of course, also equity arguments to justify government intervention in the provision of education – for instance, reducing inequality in education may be of intrinsic value, or may be instrumental in reducing inequalities in other outcomes.{/ref} This essentially means that investing in education yields both private and social returns. Private returns to education include higher wages and better employment prospects (as we discuss in our entry on <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/skill-premium-income-by-education/">Skill Premium</a>). Social return include pro-social behaviour (e.g. volunteering, political participation) and interpersonal trust.</p>   <p>This chart uses OECD results from the Survey of Adult Skills to show how self-reported trust in others correlates with educational attainment. More precisely, this chart plots the percentage-point difference in the likelihood of reporting to trust others, by education level of respondents. Those individuals with upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education are taken as the reference group, so the percentage point difference is expressed in relation to this group. As we can see, in all countries those individuals with tertiary education were by far the group most likely to report trusting others.</p>   <p>And in almost every country, those with post-secondary non-tertiary education were more likely to trust others than those with primary or lower secondary education. The OECD's report <a href="http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1">Education at a Glance (2015)</a> provides similar descriptive evidence for other social outcomes. The conclusion is that adults with higher qualifications are more likely to report desirable social outcomes, including good or excellent health, participation in volunteer activities, interpersonal trust, and political efficacy. And these results hold after controlling for literacy, gender, age and monthly earnings.</p>   <h6>Likelihood of reporting to trust others, by educational attainment, OECD 2012 – Figure A8.4 in <a href="http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1">Education at a Glance (2015)</a>{ref}As per the source notes: "Percentage-point difference reflects the relative change of reporting to trust others compared to the reference category. For example, in Norway, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education reporting to trust others increases by 20 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education. Similarly, after accounting for literacy proficiency, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education increases by 16 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education."{/ref}</h6>   <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust.png"><img src="https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust-750x441.png" alt="OECD_Education_Trust" class="wp-image-8134"/></a></figure></div>   <h4>Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making</h4>   <p>Social cohesion is often defined as the capacity of a country to support peaceful collective decision making. This pair of plots, from the World Development Report (2013),{ref}<a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf">World Development Report 2013: Jobs</a>. Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0.{/ref} show the correlation between the index of peaceful collective decision making, and two key measures of social cohesion at the micro level: trust and civic engagement. The index of peaceful collective decision making is a quantitative indicator that, for each country, aggregates data on political stability, the absence of violence, and voice and accountability.</p>   <p>The figure shows a strong positive relationship: countries where people are more likely to report trusting others, are also countries where there is less violence and more political stability and accountability.</p>   <h6>Share reporting trust in people and index of civic engagement vs index of peaceful collective decision making – World Development Report (2013){ref} <a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf">World Development Report 2013: Jobs</a>. Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0. The original sources used by the World Development Report 2013 are the World Values Survey 2005 (database), World Values Survey Association, Stockholm; Worldwide Governance Indicators 2005. The original source notes: The analysis includes 56 countries (panel a) and 49 countries (panel b). “Index of peaceful collective decision making” is an average of indicators of “voice and accountability” and “political stability and the absence of violence” from the Worldwide Governance Indicators. “Index of civic engagement” is the average of responses to questions from the World Values Survey on (a) active membership in associations; (b) whether the respondent participated or would participate in a demonstration; and (c) whether the respondent would sign a petition. This work is available under the <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)</a>.{/ref}</h6>   <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-–-world-development-report-20130.png"><img src="http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-–-world-development-report-20130-750x370.png" alt="Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making – World Development Report (2013)0" class="wp-image-4354"/></a></figure></div>   <h2>Data Quality & Measurement</h2>   <h4>How sensitive are estimates of interpersonal trust from attitudinal survey questions to changes in surveying methodologies?</h4>   <p>Attitudinal survey questions provide the main source of data to estimate interpersonal trust attitudes. Available evidence for countries with multiple such estimates, suggest that results are robust to the specific surveying methodologies. This scatter plot bears this out, by comparing cross-country estimates from different surveys. Specifically, this figure plots the estimated interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey, against interpersonal trust levels as measured by the European Social Survey and the Afrobarometer Survey. The resulting correlation is positive and very high.</p>   <h6>Interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey and European Values Study, and the European Social Survey and Afrobarometer Survey – Inglehart & Welzel (2010){ref} The source is Inglehart & Welzel (2010) - <a href="https://nnov.hse.ru/data/2011/03/21/1211300861/ChangingMassPriorities.pdf">Changing Mass Priorities: The Link between Modernization and Democracy</a>. Reflections, June 2010, Vol. 8/No. 2.. N = 28 r = .92{/ref}</h6>   <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><a href="http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels.png"><img src="http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-557x550.png" alt="Inglehart and Welzel 2010 Interpersonal trust levels" class="wp-image-5987"/></a></figure></div>   <h4>Do trust estimates from attitudinal survey questions predict trusting <em>behaviour</em>?</h4>   <p>In an academic paper, Glaeser et al. (2000){ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence">Measuring trust</a>. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref} examine the predictive power of two types of survey questions: questions about trusting attitudes and questions about past trusting behavior. The authors examine the predictive power of these questions by comparing survey answers with actual trusting behaviour in an incentivised experimental setting with monetary rewards. They show that, while measures of past trusting behavior are better than the abstract attitudinal questions in predicting subjects' experimental choices, in general terms they are both weak predictors of trust. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict <em>trustworthiness</em>. In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves.<br><br></p>   <h2>Data Sources</h2>   <h4>OECD – Eurostat</h4>   <ul><li><strong>Data:</strong> OECD data on trust is published in the <em>Society at a Glance - OECD Social Indicators</em>. This source relies on the estimates from Eurostat, specifically the EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC)</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> OECD member states</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong> Recent years</li><li><strong>Available at:</strong> online <a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/society-at-a-glance-2011/trust_soc_glance-2011-26-en">here</a>.</li></ul>   <h4>The World Value Survey (WVS)</h4>   <ul><li><strong>Data:</strong> Data on trust and many other social and cultural characteristics from cross-national and time-series surveys</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> The WVS covers almost 100 societies (nearly 90% of the world’s population). But not all countries have observations in each survey wave.</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong>  Several waves of surveys from 1981 onwards</li><li><strong>Available at:</strong> <a href="http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp">http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp</a></li></ul>   <h4>US General Social Survey</h4>   <ul><li><strong>Data:</strong> Time-series data on trust and many other social and cultural characteristics</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> US</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong> Yearly surveys since 1972</li><li><strong>Available at:</strong> <a href="https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org">https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org</a></li></ul>

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                        "text": "Trust is a fundamental element of social capital \u2013 a key contributor to sustaining well-being outcomes, including economic development. In this entry we discuss available data on trust, as measured by attitudinal survey questions; that is, estimates from surveys asking about trusting attitudes.",
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                        "text": "Global comparisons of trust attitudes around the world today suggest very large time-persistent cross-country heterogeneity. In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden more than 60% of respondents in the World Value Survey agree that \"most people can be trusted\". And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case.",
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                        "text": "Data from European countries shows that average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low \u2013 in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland. On the other hand, trust in the police is notably high, and in the majority of European countries \bpeople trust the police more than they trust each other.",
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                        "text": "Long-run data from the US, where the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972, suggests that people trust each other less today than 40 years ago. This decline in interpersonal trust in the US has been coupled with a long-run reduction in public trust in government \u2013 according to estimates compiled by the Pew Research Center since 1958, today trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels.",
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                        "text": "Interpersonal trust attitudes correlate strongly with religious affiliation and upbringing. Some studies have shown that this strong positive relationship remains after controlling for several survey-respondent characteristics.{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). ",
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                        "url": "https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Does culture affect economic outcomes?",
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                    {
                        "text": ". The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref}",
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                        "text": " This, in turn, has led researchers to use religion as a proxy for trust, in order to estimate the extent to which economic outcomes depend on trust attitudes. Estimates from these and other studies using an instrumental-variable approach, suggest that trust has a causal impact on economic outcomes.{ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). ",
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                        "url": "https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Inherited trust and growth",
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                            }
                        ],
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                        "text": ". The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} This suggests that the remarkable cross-country heterogeneity in trust that we observe today, can explain a significant part of the historical differences in cross-country income levels.",
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                        "children": [
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                                "url": "#all-charts",
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                                    {
                                        "text": "See all interactive charts on trust \u2193",
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                        "text": "Measures of trust from attitudinal survey questions remain the most common source of data on trust. Yet academic studies have shown that these measures of trust are generally weak predictors of actual trusting behaviour. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict ",
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                                "text": "trustworthiness",
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                        "text": ". In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves.{ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). ",
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                        "url": "https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence",
                        "children": [
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                                "text": "Measuring trust",
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                    {
                        "text": ". Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref}",
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                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "How do countries around the world compare in terms of interpersonal trust?",
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                        "text": "The World Value Survey allows cross-country comparisons of self-reported trust attitudes. This visualization shows estimates of the share of survey respondents agreeing with the statement \"most people can be trusted\".{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked ",
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                        "children": [
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                                "text": "\"Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?\" ",
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                        "text": ". Possible answers include \"Most people can be trusted\", \"Don't Know\" and \"Can't be too careful\". We report figures of \"Most people can be trusted\" as a share of all answers. {/ref}",
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                        "text": "In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden, more than 60% of respondents agree that most people can be trusted. And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case.",
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                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/self-reported-trust-attitudes?tab=map",
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                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "How large are cross-country differences in estimates of interpersonal trust in Europe?",
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                        "text": "The results from the World Value Survey discussed above show that there are very large, time-persistent cross-country differences in the share of people who report trusting others, even within European countries. But are these cross-country differences similarly large if we look at average ratings of trust in a scale that allows for differences in intensity? The following visualization shows the average rating of trust in others across European countries, using data from Eurostat. In this case, respondents answer to the question \"would you say that most people can be trusted?\" using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, results are consistent \u2013 countries with high interpersonal trust in the World Value Survey also have high trust ratings in the Eurostat survey. Yet heterogeneity on the more granular scale used by Eurostat is somewhat smaller.",
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                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-rating-of-trust-in-others-selected-countries",
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                "text": [
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                        "text": "How much do people in developed countries trust public institutions?",
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                        "text": "The OECD, using Eurostat data, provides estimates of trust in public institutions that are comparable to estimates of 'trust in others' (i.e. interpersonal trust). The following visualization, taken from the OECD report ",
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                        "url": "http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en",
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                                "text": "How's life? (2015) ",
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                        "text": ", shows average ratings of trust in (i) the political system, (ii) the police, and (iii) the legal system. These figures can be directly compared to those on interpersonal trust discussed in the ",
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                                "text": "visualization above",
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                        "text": ". In both cases figures rely on Eurostat data from the same survey, so respondents here also rate trust in institutions using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low \u2013 in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland",
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                        "text": "The data suggests a broad correlation between trust in others, and trust in the different public institutions. Specifically, northern Europe (and Switzerland) report higher levels of trust, while southern and eastern Europe (and France) report lower levels across the board.",
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                        "text": "Mean trust in public institutions, European countries, 2013 \u2013 Figure 3.14 in the OECD report ",
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                        "url": "http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en",
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                                "text": "How's life? (2015) ",
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                        "text": "{ref}Eurostat data. Response options range from 0 (\u2018\u2018no trust at all\u2019\u2019) to 10 (\u2018\u2018Complete trust\u2019\u2019).{/ref}",
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                "alt": "OECD(2015)_TrustInstitutions",
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                "text": [
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                        "text": "People in most European countries trust the police more than they trust each other",
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                        "text": "We mentioned above that the police is trusted more than other public institutions in most European countries. But do people in these countries trust the police more than they trust each other? This question is relevant, because trust in the police can become, in certain situations, an important substitute for interpersonal trust. This visualization plots Eurostat figures for trust in the police (y-axis) and trust in others (x-axis). The size of each dot represents national income (PPP-adjusted GDP per capita). We can see that there is a clear positive correlation; and in the majority of countries people report the same or higher trust in the police than trust in others. The clear exceptions are Greece, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and Slovenia \u2013 these are the countries that lie significantly below a hypothetical line with slope one (i.e. the line below which trust in others is higher than trust in the police). Denmark and the Netherlands, both with higher levels of trust than the mentioned countries, are also somewhat below this hypothetical line.",
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                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-in-others-vs-trust-in-police",
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                "text": [
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                        "text": "Trust in OECD governments has been going up in recent years",
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                        "text": "From an inter-temporal perspective, data suggests that trust in public institutions has been going up recently in OECD countries. This visualization shows the OECD-average estimate of trust in governments over the period 2010\u20132020. The percentage of the population reporting confidence in the national government has increased from 35% in 2013 to 46% in 2020.",
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                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oecd-average-trust-in-governments",
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                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "How much do people trust others, their government, journalists, and science?",
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                        "text": "The Wellcome Global Monitor is the world\u2019s largest study into how people around the world think and feel about science and major health challenges. It surveys over 140,000 people from more than 140 countries.",
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                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-neighborhood?country=HUN~MMR~USA~GBR~JPN~RUS~IND~CHN~NGA~IDN~BRA~FRA~DEU",
                "type": "chart",
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                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-who-trust-government",
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                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-journalists-country?country=USA~RUS~IND~CHN~GBR~JPN~FRA~DEU~ITA~IDN~NGA~SWE",
                "type": "chart",
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                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-science?country=USA~GBR~CHN~IND~RUS~JPN~FRA~BRA~DEU~IDN~NGA~SWE",
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                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Country-specific surveys",
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                "text": [
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                        "text": "In the US, trust in the federal government is at historically low levels",
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                        "text": "The Pew Research Center recently constructed a series of long-run estimates of trust in the government for the US, staring 1958. This visualization uses their data, to plot the share of people who say they can trust the government in Washington always or most of the time.{ref}The survey asked the question \"How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right?\" Answers included \"Just about always\", \"Most of the time\", or \"Only some of the time\".{/ref} As it can be seen there are some clear patterns associated with political cycles, but in the long-run there is a negative trend. Today, trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels. The Pew Research Center has a ",
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                        "url": "http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/public-trust-in-government-1958-2015/",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "dedicated website",
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                        ],
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                    {
                        "text": ", with many interesting visualizations \u2013 including disaggregated trends by ethnicity and political affiliation. Further details and analysis available in the report ",
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                    },
                    {
                        "url": "http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/11/11-23-2015-Governance-release.pdf",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Beyond Distrust: How Americans View their Government",
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                        "text": ".",
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                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/public-trust-in-government",
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                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "In the US, people trust each other less now than 40 years ago",
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                        "text": "In the US, the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972. To our knowledge, this is the longest available time-series on interpersonal trust estimates in the world. This visualization uses this source to show the evolution of trust in the US. Specifically, this plot shows the share of respondents agreeing with the statement \"most people can be trusted\" in the surveys 1972-2014.{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked ",
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                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "\"Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?\"",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-italic"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". Available replies are \"Can trust\", \"Cannot trust\", \"Depends\" and \"Don't Know\". We report figures of \"Can trust\" as a share of all answers. {/ref} As we can see, there are short-term fluctuations, but people in the US seem to trust each other less today than 40 years ago.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-attitudes-in-the-us",
                "type": "chart",
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "In the UK, trust in others has remained relatively stable over the last couple of decades \u2013 but other measures of social capital have not",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 3,
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "Trust is a key element of social capital \u2013 but it is not the only one. Data from the UK suggests that different aspects of social capital change in time at different rates. This chart, from the ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Centre for Social Investigation",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": " at Nuffield College, Oxford, shows that in the UK trust in other people fluctuates year by year, but there is no trend over the last couple of decades. This is consistent with the figures from the World Value Survey, where the UK shows little variation between the 1998 and 2009 surveys. Interestingly, however, associations with voluntary organisations declined significantly over the same period \u2013 the chart shows that the percentage of the UK population that is active with one or more organization fell from 52% in 1993 to 43% in 2012.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Trends in four measures of social capital, UK, 1991-2013 \u2013 Figure 2 in Centre for Social Investigation (2015){ref} This graph is taken from the report ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/CSI_15_The_uneven_distribution.pdf",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "CSI 15: The uneven distribution and decline of social capital in Britain",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". The reported underlying data sources are the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the UK Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS), the Citizenship/ Community Life Survey (CLS), and the Health Survey for England (HSE){/ref}",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 5,
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "alt": "CSI15_BritishSocialCapital",
                "size": "wide",
                "type": "image",
                "filename": "CSI15_BritishSocialCapital.png",
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "In the UK trust in experts has mostly increased",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 3,
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "The chart shows data on trust in various groups of experts in the UK. The data is based on surveys that go back to 1983.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "There are large differences between professions \u2013 trust in journalists is low, while trust in professors, teachers, and doctors is high.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "For all groups \u2013 with the exception of clergy/priests \u2013 the levels of trust have inceased snce the first surveys were conducted.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
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                "alt": "",
                "size": "wide",
                "type": "image",
                "filename": "Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37.png",
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "In Sweden, trust is not only very high, but also remarkably stable",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 3,
                "parseErrors": []
            },
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "The data from Eurostat and the World Value Survey shows that Sweden is one of the countries with the highest levels of trust globally. This visualization from the ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "http://som.gu.se",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "SOM institute",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": " \u2013 an independent survey research organisation at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden \u2013, shows that interpersonal trust in Sweden is not only high, but also very stable across time.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "In this visualisation we see the degree of trust in others, raging from 0 to 10. We can see that estimates are very persistent \u2013 the share of individuals rating trust as low (0-3), medium (4-6) and high (7-10) has not changed significantly over the last two decades.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Trust in people, Sweden, 1996-2015 \u2013 SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": "{/ref}",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 5,
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "alt": "SOM_SwedishTrustPeople",
                "size": "wide",
                "type": "image",
                "filename": "SOM_SwedishTrustPeople.png",
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "The data from the SOM in Sweden also allows an inter-temporal analysis of other measures of trust. This visualization shows estimates of general trust in politicians. In this case stability is reflected in the fact that political cycles are not associated with accentuated fluctuations. This seems to contrast with the data from the US, where public trust in government seems to be highly cyclical.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "General trust in politicians, Sweden, 1998-2015 \u2013 SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": "{/ref}",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 5,
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "alt": "SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians",
                "size": "wide",
                "type": "image",
                "filename": "SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians.png",
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Trust and culture",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 2,
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Do trust attitudes correlate with religion?",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 3,
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "A number of academic studies have explored the link between religious beliefs and self-reported trust attitudes. This figure, from Guiso et al. (2006),{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Does culture affect economic outcomes?",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} summarizes the results from one such study using data from the World Values Survey. Specifically, the bars in this figure represent the effect of religious affiliation on trust, in percent of the sample mean of trust relative to \"no religious affiliation\". The reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). Since the data is available for the same country over several years, the authors also control for country-specific time-invariant characteristics (the so-called country fixed effects).",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "Taking these results at face value, the reported effects suggest that being raised religiously raises the level of trust by 2.6 percent; and regularly attending religious services (the author's definition of being \"religious\" for the purpose of the figure), raises the level of trust by another 20 percent. Similarly, these results suggest that the effect of religion differs across denominations: self-reported Catholic and Protestant religious affiliation has a positive effect on trust; while Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist affiliation does not.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "As usual, these results have to be interpreted with caution, since reported figures do not control for unobservable time-varying factors that may simultaneously affect attitudes towards religion and trust; in other words, it is likely that there are unaccounted sources of bias that undermine the causal interpretation of the coefficients. Indeed, other studies using attitudinal survey questions on trust have found different results. For instance, Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., & Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&rep=rep1&type=pdf",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "here",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": "{/ref} use data from the General Social Survey in the US, and find that religious affiliation is not statistically related to trust after controlling for further characteristics, such as whether survey respondents had a history of traumatic experiences.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Effect of religious affiliation on trust relative to no religious affiliation \u2013 Guiso et al. (2006){ref}Reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). The underlying source of the data used for the regressions is the European Values Survey and World Values Survey 1981\u201384, 1990\u201393, 1995\u201397. Further details from the authors: Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Does culture affect economic outcomes?",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref}",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 5,
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "alt": "GuisoEtal(2006)_TrustReligion",
                "size": "wide",
                "type": "image",
                "filename": "GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion.png",
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Trust and economic outcomes",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 2,
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "What is the relationship between trust and GDP?",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 3,
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "In a much cited article, Arrow (1972){ref}Arrow, K. J. (1972). Gifts and exchanges. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 343-362.{/ref} says that \"Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust, certainly any transaction conducted over a period of time.\"",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "The extent to which trust is linked to economic development has been the subject of many academic papers in the economics literature on growth (see Guiso et al. 2006,{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Does culture affect economic outcomes?",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} Algan and Cahuc 2010,{ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Inherited trust and growth",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} and the references therein). A common way to get a first-order approximation of this relationship is to estimate the correlations between trust and GDP per capita. This visualization provides evidence of this correlation, by plotting trust estimates from the World Value Survey against GDP per capita. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country. You can learn more about measures of national income in our ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "http://ourworldindata.org/gdp-data/",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "entry on GDP data",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ".",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "As it can be seen, there is a very strong positive relationship. Most academic studies find that this relationship remains after controlling for further characteristics. And similar results can also be obtained by looking at other measures of economic outcomes. Looking at outcomes across individuals, Guiso et al. (2006), for instance, report that trust has a positive and statistically significant correlation with the probability of becoming an entrepreneur, even after controlling for education, age and individual income. Their results also hold if religious affiliation of the respondents' ancestors is used as a proxy for trust \u2013 they thus argue that, since ancestors' religion correlates with respondents' trust attitudes, this instrumental variable approach can be taken as evidence that the estimated relationship goes in the suggested direction (i.e. that trust ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "leads",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-italic"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": " to entrepreneurship, rather than the other way around).",
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                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "Other studies using instrumental variables have also found similarly large effects. Algan and Cahuc (2010){ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Inherited trust and growth",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} predict that, according to their estimates, African countries would have a five-fold increase in GDP per capita if they had the same level of inherited social attitudes as Sweden, after controlling for lagged GDP per capita, contemporaneous political environment and time-invariant country characteristics.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "Algan and Cahuc (2010) show that inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is significantly influenced by the country of origin and the timing of arrival of their forebears. This is their instrumental variable: the inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is used as a time-varying measure of inherited trust in the country of origin. This approach allows the authors to control for country fixed effects and interpret the effect of trust on growth ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "causally",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-italic"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". You can read a summary of their findings and approach in a ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "http://voxeu.org/article/trust-and-economic-development",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "voxeu.org article written by the researchers",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ".",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "Nunn and Wantchekon (2011){ref}Nunn, N., & Wantchekon, L. (2011). ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/11986331/nunn-slave-trade.pdf?sequence=1",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". The American Economic Review, 101(7), 3221-3252. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41408736{/ref} provide evidence to explain mistrust in Africa: they show that current differences in trust levels within Africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades. More specifically, they show that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today \u2013 and using a variety of different econometric strategies, they claim that this relationship is causal.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Trust vs. GDP per capita, 2014 (or latest available data) {ref}Trust data corresponds to share of respondents in the World Value Survey agreeing with the statement \"most people can be trusted\". Possible answers include \"Most people can be trusted\", \"Don't Know\" and \"Can't be too careful\". GDP per capita data from Penn World Table.{/ref}",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 5,
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "alt": "Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita",
                "size": "wide",
                "type": "image",
                "filename": "Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita.png",
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            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "What is the relationship between trust and income inequality?",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 3,
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "Cross-country data, as well as within-country data, suggest that economic inequality is negatively related to trust. This visualization provides evidence of this relationship: it shows a scatter plot of trust estimates from the World Value Survey against income inequality measured by the Gini index. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country, with colors representing different world regions and dot sizes representing population. A Gini index of 0 reflects perfect equality, so the observed negative correlation in this graph implies that higher inequality is associated with lower trust. In other words, we can see that countries with higher income inequality also tend to report lower levels of trust. You can read more about income inequality and the Gini index in our entry on ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-prosperity/income-inequality/#the-gini-coefficient",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "income inequality",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ".",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "This negative relationship can be explained through various mechanisms: social ties may imply that people are more willing to trust those who are similar to themselves, or higher inequality may lead to conflicts over resources. The empirical work from Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., & Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&rep=rep1&type=pdf",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "here",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": "{/ref} provides evidence in support of the former mechanism. Jordahl, H. (2007){ref}Jordahl, H. (2007). ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "http://www.ifn.se/Wfiles/wp/wp715.pdf",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Inequality and Trust",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". Working Paper Series 715, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.{/ref} provides a discussion of these and other possible mechanisms.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/interpersonal-trust-vs-income-inequality",
                "type": "chart",
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Trust and social outcomes",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 2,
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Is there a link between education and trust?",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
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                "level": 3,
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "type": "text",
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                        "text": "One of the reasons to justify government intervention in the market for education, is that education generates positive externalities.{ref}That positive externalities justify government intervention in the provision of education is essentially an efficiency argument. The logic is that individuals may not spend enough on education because they fail to internalize the positive effect that their education has on other people. But there are, of course, also equity arguments to justify government intervention in the provision of education \u2013 for instance, reducing inequality in education may be of intrinsic value, or may be instrumental in reducing inequalities in other outcomes.{/ref} This essentially means that investing in education yields both private and social returns. Private returns to education include higher wages and better employment prospects (as we discuss in our entry on ",
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                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/skill-premium-income-by-education/",
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                                "text": "Skill Premium",
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                        "text": "). Social return include pro-social behaviour (e.g. volunteering, political participation) and interpersonal trust.",
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                        "text": "This chart uses OECD results from the Survey of Adult Skills to show how self-reported trust in others correlates with educational attainment. More precisely, this chart plots the percentage-point difference in the likelihood of reporting to trust others, by education level of respondents. Those individuals with upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education are taken as the reference group, so the percentage point difference is expressed in relation to this group. As we can see, in all countries those individuals with tertiary education were by far the group most likely to report trusting others.",
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                        "text": "And in almost every country, those with post-secondary non-tertiary education were more likely to trust others than those with primary or lower secondary education. The OECD's report ",
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                        "url": "http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Education at a Glance (2015)",
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                        "text": " provides similar descriptive evidence for other social outcomes. The conclusion is that adults with higher qualifications are more likely to report desirable social outcomes, including good or excellent health, participation in volunteer activities, interpersonal trust, and political efficacy. And these results hold after controlling for literacy, gender, age and monthly earnings.",
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                "text": [
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                        "text": "Likelihood of reporting to trust others, by educational attainment, OECD 2012 \u2013 Figure A8.4 in ",
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                        "url": "http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1",
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                                "text": "Education at a Glance (2015)",
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                        "text": "{ref}As per the source notes: \"Percentage-point difference reflects the relative change of reporting to trust others compared to the reference category. For example, in Norway, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education reporting to trust others increases by 20 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education. Similarly, after accounting for literacy proficiency, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education increases by 16 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education.\"{/ref}",
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                "alt": "OECD_Education_Trust",
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                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making",
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                        "text": "Social cohesion is often defined as the capacity of a country to support peaceful collective decision making. This pair of plots, from the World Development Report (2013),{ref}",
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                    {
                        "url": "http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "World Development Report 2013: Jobs",
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                        "text": ". Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0.{/ref} show the correlation between the index of peaceful collective decision making, and two key measures of social cohesion at the micro level: trust and civic engagement. The index of peaceful collective decision making is a quantitative indicator that, for each country, aggregates data on political stability, the absence of violence, and voice and accountability.",
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                        "text": "The figure shows a strong positive relationship: countries where people are more likely to report trusting others, are also countries where there is less violence and more political stability and accountability.",
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                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Share reporting trust in people and index of civic engagement vs index of peaceful collective decision making\u00a0\u2013\u00a0World Development Report (2013){ref} ",
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                    },
                    {
                        "url": "http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "World Development Report 2013: Jobs",
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                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0. The original sources used by the World Development Report 2013 are the World Values Survey 2005 (database), World Values Survey Association, Stockholm; Worldwide Governance Indicators 2005. The original source notes: The analysis includes 56 countries (panel a) and 49 countries (panel b). \u201cIndex of peaceful collective decision making\u201d is an average of indicators of \u201cvoice and accountability\u201d and \u201cpolitical stability and the absence of violence\u201d from the Worldwide Governance Indicators. \u201cIndex of civic engagement\u201d is the average of responses to questions from the World Values Survey on (a) active membership in associations; (b) whether the respondent participated or would participate in a demonstration; and (c) whether the respondent would sign a petition. This work is available under the ",
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                        "children": [
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                                "text": "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)",
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                        "text": ".{/ref}",
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                "alt": "Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making \u2013\u00a0World Development Report (2013)0",
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                        "text": "Data Quality & Measurement",
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                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "How sensitive are estimates of interpersonal trust from attitudinal survey questions to changes in surveying methodologies?",
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                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "Attitudinal survey questions provide the main source of data to estimate interpersonal trust attitudes. Available evidence for countries with multiple such estimates, suggest that results are robust to the specific surveying methodologies. This scatter plot bears this out, by comparing cross-country estimates from different surveys. Specifically, this figure plots the estimated interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey, against interpersonal trust levels as measured by the European Social Survey and the Afrobarometer Survey. The resulting correlation is positive and very high.",
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                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey and European Values Study, and the European Social Survey and Afrobarometer Survey\u00a0\u2013 Inglehart & Welzel (2010){ref} The source is Inglehart & Welzel (2010) - ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://nnov.hse.ru/data/2011/03/21/1211300861/ChangingMassPriorities.pdf",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Changing Mass Priorities: The Link between Modernization and Democracy",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". Reflections, June 2010, Vol. 8/No. 2.. N = 28 r = .92{/ref}",
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            {
                "alt": "Inglehart and Welzel 2010 Interpersonal trust levels",
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                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Do trust estimates from attitudinal survey questions predict trusting ",
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                        "children": [
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                                "text": "behaviour",
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                    {
                        "text": "?",
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                        "text": "In an academic paper, Glaeser et al. (2000){ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                    {
                        "url": "https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence",
                        "children": [
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                                "text": "Measuring trust",
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                    {
                        "text": ". Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref} examine the predictive power of two types of survey questions: questions about trusting attitudes and questions about past trusting behavior. The authors examine the predictive power of these questions by comparing survey answers with actual trusting behaviour in an incentivised experimental setting with monetary rewards. They show that, while measures of past trusting behavior are better than the abstract attitudinal questions in predicting subjects' experimental choices, in general terms they are both weak predictors of trust. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict ",
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                        "children": [
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                                "text": "trustworthiness",
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                        "text": ". In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves.",
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                        "text": "Data Sources",
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                        "text": "OECD \u2013 Eurostat",
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                                "text": " OECD data on trust is published in the ",
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                                        "text": "Society at a Glance - OECD Social Indicators",
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                                "text": ". This source relies on the estimates from Eurostat, specifically the EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC)",
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                                "text": " OECD member states",
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                                "text": " Recent years",
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                                "text": " online ",
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                                        "text": "here",
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                        "text": "The World Value Survey (WVS)",
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                                "text": " Data on trust and many other social and cultural characteristics from cross-national and time-series surveys",
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                                "text": " The WVS covers almost 100 societies (nearly 90% of the world\u2019s population). But not all countries have observations in each survey wave.",
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                                "text": "\u00a0 Several waves of surveys from 1981 onwards",
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        "type": "linear-topic-page",
        "title": "Trust",
        "authors": [
            "Esteban Ortiz-Ospina",
            "Max Roser"
        ],
        "excerpt": "Trust is essential for community, wellbeing, and effective cooperation. How does trust vary between different societies and locations and what matters for levels of trust?",
        "dateline": "July 22, 2016",
        "subtitle": "Trust is essential for community, wellbeing, and effective cooperation. How does trust vary between different societies and locations and what matters for levels of trust?",
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        "sidebar-toc": true,
        "featured-image": "Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-1.png"
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    "createdAt": "2016-08-15T17:54:40.000Z",
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    "updatedAt": "2023-03-13T17:36:28.000Z",
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    "publishedAt": "2016-07-22T20:55:11.000Z",
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2016-07-22 20:55:11

2024-03-19 18:43:12

1Ts7cAiBzxpv9AYH2uwmMzMt88wVHQcl100nlabkxXyo

[
    "Esteban Ortiz-Ospina"
]

Trust is essential for community, wellbeing, and effective cooperation. How does trust vary between different societies and locations and what matters for levels of trust?

2016-08-15 17:54:40

2023-03-13 17:36:28

https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-1.png

{}

Trust is a fundamental element of social capital – a key contributor to sustaining well-being outcomes, including economic development. In this entry we discuss available data on trust, as measured by attitudinal survey questions; that is, estimates from surveys asking about trusting attitudes. Global comparisons of trust attitudes around the world today suggest very large time-persistent cross-country heterogeneity. In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden more than 60% of respondents in the World Value Survey agree that "most people can be trusted". And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case. Data from European countries shows that average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low – in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland. On the other hand, trust in the police is notably high, and in the majority of European countries people trust the police more than they trust each other. Long-run data from the US, where the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972, suggests that people trust each other less today than 40 years ago. This decline in interpersonal trust in the US has been coupled with a long-run reduction in public trust in government – according to estimates compiled by the Pew Research Center since 1958, today trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels. Interpersonal trust attitudes correlate strongly with religious affiliation and upbringing. Some studies have shown that this strong positive relationship remains after controlling for several survey-respondent characteristics.{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). [Does culture affect economic outcomes?](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23). The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} This, in turn, has led researchers to use religion as a proxy for trust, in order to estimate the extent to which economic outcomes depend on trust attitudes. Estimates from these and other studies using an instrumental-variable approach, suggest that trust has a causal impact on economic outcomes.{ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). [Inherited trust and growth](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=). The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} This suggests that the remarkable cross-country heterogeneity in trust that we observe today, can explain a significant part of the historical differences in cross-country income levels. **[See all interactive charts on trust ↓](#all-charts)** Measures of trust from attitudinal survey questions remain the most common source of data on trust. Yet academic studies have shown that these measures of trust are generally weak predictors of actual trusting behaviour. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict _trustworthiness_. In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves.{ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). [Measuring trust](https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence). Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref} ## How do countries around the world compare in terms of interpersonal trust? The World Value Survey allows cross-country comparisons of self-reported trust attitudes. This visualization shows estimates of the share of survey respondents agreeing with the statement "most people can be trusted".{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked _"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 include "Most people can be trusted", "Don't Know" and "Can't be too careful". We report figures of "Most people can be trusted" as a share of all answers. {/ref} In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden, more than 60% of respondents agree that most people can be trusted. And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/self-reported-trust-attitudes?tab=map"/> ### How large are cross-country differences in estimates of interpersonal trust in Europe? The results from the World Value Survey discussed above show that there are very large, time-persistent cross-country differences in the share of people who report trusting others, even within European countries. But are these cross-country differences similarly large if we look at average ratings of trust in a scale that allows for differences in intensity? The following visualization shows the average rating of trust in others across European countries, using data from Eurostat. In this case, respondents answer to the question "would you say that most people can be trusted?" using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, results are consistent – countries with high interpersonal trust in the World Value Survey also have high trust ratings in the Eurostat survey. Yet heterogeneity on the more granular scale used by Eurostat is somewhat smaller. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-rating-of-trust-in-others-selected-countries"/> ### How much do people in developed countries trust public institutions? The OECD, using Eurostat data, provides estimates of trust in public institutions that are comparable to estimates of 'trust in others' (i.e. interpersonal trust). The following visualization, taken from the OECD report [How's life? (2015) ](http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en), shows average ratings of trust in (i) the political system, (ii) the police, and (iii) the legal system. These figures can be directly compared to those on interpersonal trust discussed in the [visualization above](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-rating-of-trust-in-others-selected-countries). In both cases figures rely on Eurostat data from the same survey, so respondents here also rate trust in institutions using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low – in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland The data suggests a broad correlation between trust in others, and trust in the different public institutions. Specifically, northern Europe (and Switzerland) report higher levels of trust, while southern and eastern Europe (and France) report lower levels across the board. ##### Mean trust in public institutions, European countries, 2013 – Figure 3.14 in the OECD report [How's life? (2015) ](http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en){ref}Eurostat data. Response options range from 0 (‘‘no trust at all’’) to 10 (‘‘Complete trust’’).{/ref} <Image filename="OECD2015_TrustInstitutions.png" alt="OECD(2015)_TrustInstitutions"/> ### People in most European countries trust the police more than they trust each other We mentioned above that the police is trusted more than other public institutions in most European countries. But do people in these countries trust the police more than they trust each other? This question is relevant, because trust in the police can become, in certain situations, an important substitute for interpersonal trust. This visualization plots Eurostat figures for trust in the police (y-axis) and trust in others (x-axis). The size of each dot represents national income (PPP-adjusted GDP per capita). We can see that there is a clear positive correlation; and in the majority of countries people report the same or higher trust in the police than trust in others. The clear exceptions are Greece, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and Slovenia – these are the countries that lie significantly below a hypothetical line with slope one (i.e. the line below which trust in others is higher than trust in the police). Denmark and the Netherlands, both with higher levels of trust than the mentioned countries, are also somewhat below this hypothetical line. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-in-others-vs-trust-in-police"/> ### Trust in OECD governments has been going up in recent years From an inter-temporal perspective, data suggests that trust in public institutions has been going up recently in OECD countries. This visualization shows the OECD-average estimate of trust in governments over the period 2010–2020. The percentage of the population reporting confidence in the national government has increased from 35% in 2013 to 46% in 2020. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oecd-average-trust-in-governments"/> ### How much do people trust others, their government, journalists, and science? The Wellcome Global Monitor is the world’s largest study into how people around the world think and feel about science and major health challenges. It surveys over 140,000 people from more than 140 countries. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-neighborhood?country=HUN~MMR~USA~GBR~JPN~RUS~IND~CHN~NGA~IDN~BRA~FRA~DEU"/> <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-who-trust-government"/> <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-journalists-country?country=USA~RUS~IND~CHN~GBR~JPN~FRA~DEU~ITA~IDN~NGA~SWE"/> <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-science?country=USA~GBR~CHN~IND~RUS~JPN~FRA~BRA~DEU~IDN~NGA~SWE"/> ## Country-specific surveys ### In the US, trust in the federal government is at historically low levels The Pew Research Center recently constructed a series of long-run estimates of trust in the government for the US, staring 1958. This visualization uses their data, to plot the share of people who say they can trust the government in Washington always or most of the time.{ref}The survey asked the question "How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right?" Answers included "Just about always", "Most of the time", or "Only some of the time".{/ref} As it can be seen there are some clear patterns associated with political cycles, but in the long-run there is a negative trend. Today, trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels. The Pew Research Center has a [dedicated website](http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/public-trust-in-government-1958-2015/), with many interesting visualizations – including disaggregated trends by ethnicity and political affiliation. Further details and analysis available in the report [Beyond Distrust: How Americans View their Government](http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/11/11-23-2015-Governance-release.pdf). <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/public-trust-in-government"/> ### In the US, people trust each other less now than 40 years ago In the US, the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972. To our knowledge, this is the longest available time-series on interpersonal trust estimates in the world. This visualization uses this source to show the evolution of trust in the US. Specifically, this plot shows the share of respondents agreeing with the statement "most people can be trusted" in the surveys 1972-2014.{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked _"Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?"_. Available replies are "Can trust", "Cannot trust", "Depends" and "Don't Know". We report figures of "Can trust" as a share of all answers. {/ref} As we can see, there are short-term fluctuations, but people in the US seem to trust each other less today than 40 years ago. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-attitudes-in-the-us"/> ### In the UK, trust in others has remained relatively stable over the last couple of decades – but other measures of social capital have not Trust is a key element of social capital – but it is not the only one. Data from the UK suggests that different aspects of social capital change in time at different rates. This chart, from the [Centre for Social Investigation](http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk) at Nuffield College, Oxford, shows that in the UK trust in other people fluctuates year by year, but there is no trend over the last couple of decades. This is consistent with the figures from the World Value Survey, where the UK shows little variation between the 1998 and 2009 surveys. Interestingly, however, associations with voluntary organisations declined significantly over the same period – the chart shows that the percentage of the UK population that is active with one or more organization fell from 52% in 1993 to 43% in 2012. ##### Trends in four measures of social capital, UK, 1991-2013 – Figure 2 in Centre for Social Investigation (2015){ref} This graph is taken from the report [CSI 15: The uneven distribution and decline of social capital in Britain](http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/CSI_15_The_uneven_distribution.pdf). The reported underlying data sources are the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the UK Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS), the Citizenship/ Community Life Survey (CLS), and the Health Survey for England (HSE){/ref} <Image filename="CSI15_BritishSocialCapital.png" alt="CSI15_BritishSocialCapital"/> ### In the UK trust in experts has mostly increased The chart shows data on trust in various groups of experts in the UK. The data is based on surveys that go back to 1983. There are large differences between professions – trust in journalists is low, while trust in professors, teachers, and doctors is high. For all groups – with the exception of clergy/priests – the levels of trust have inceased snce the first surveys were conducted. <Image filename="Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37.png" alt=""/> ### In Sweden, trust is not only very high, but also remarkably stable The data from Eurostat and the World Value Survey shows that Sweden is one of the countries with the highest levels of trust globally. This visualization from the [SOM institute](http://som.gu.se) – an independent survey research organisation at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden –, shows that interpersonal trust in Sweden is not only high, but also very stable across time. In this visualisation we see the degree of trust in others, raging from 0 to 10. We can see that estimates are very persistent – the share of individuals rating trust as low (0-3), medium (4-6) and high (7-10) has not changed significantly over the last two decades. ##### Trust in people, Sweden, 1996-2015 – SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at [http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf](http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf){/ref} <Image filename="SOM_SwedishTrustPeople.png" alt="SOM_SwedishTrustPeople"/> The data from the SOM in Sweden also allows an inter-temporal analysis of other measures of trust. This visualization shows estimates of general trust in politicians. In this case stability is reflected in the fact that political cycles are not associated with accentuated fluctuations. This seems to contrast with the data from the US, where public trust in government seems to be highly cyclical. ##### General trust in politicians, Sweden, 1998-2015 – SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at [http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf](http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf){/ref} <Image filename="SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians.png" alt="SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians"/> ## Trust and culture ### Do trust attitudes correlate with religion? A number of academic studies have explored the link between religious beliefs and self-reported trust attitudes. This figure, from Guiso et al. (2006),{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). [Does culture affect economic outcomes?](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23). The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} summarizes the results from one such study using data from the World Values Survey. Specifically, the bars in this figure represent the effect of religious affiliation on trust, in percent of the sample mean of trust relative to "no religious affiliation". The reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). Since the data is available for the same country over several years, the authors also control for country-specific time-invariant characteristics (the so-called country fixed effects). Taking these results at face value, the reported effects suggest that being raised religiously raises the level of trust by 2.6 percent; and regularly attending religious services (the author's definition of being "religious" for the purpose of the figure), raises the level of trust by another 20 percent. Similarly, these results suggest that the effect of religion differs across denominations: self-reported Catholic and Protestant religious affiliation has a positive effect on trust; while Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist affiliation does not. As usual, these results have to be interpreted with caution, since reported figures do not control for unobservable time-varying factors that may simultaneously affect attitudes towards religion and trust; in other words, it is likely that there are unaccounted sources of bias that undermine the causal interpretation of the coefficients. Indeed, other studies using attitudinal survey questions on trust have found different results. For instance, Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., & Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from [here](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&rep=rep1&type=pdf){/ref} use data from the General Social Survey in the US, and find that religious affiliation is not statistically related to trust after controlling for further characteristics, such as whether survey respondents had a history of traumatic experiences. ##### Effect of religious affiliation on trust relative to no religious affiliation – Guiso et al. (2006){ref}Reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). The underlying source of the data used for the regressions is the European Values Survey and World Values Survey 1981–84, 1990–93, 1995–97. Further details from the authors: Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). [Does culture affect economic outcomes?](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23). The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} <Image filename="GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion.png" alt="GuisoEtal(2006)_TrustReligion"/> ## Trust and economic outcomes ### What is the relationship between trust and GDP? In a much cited article, Arrow (1972){ref}Arrow, K. J. (1972). Gifts and exchanges. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 343-362.{/ref} says that "Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust, certainly any transaction conducted over a period of time." The extent to which trust is linked to economic development has been the subject of many academic papers in the economics literature on growth (see Guiso et al. 2006,{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., & Zingales, L. (2006). [Does culture affect economic outcomes?](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23). The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} Algan and Cahuc 2010,{ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). [Inherited trust and growth](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=). The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} and the references therein). A common way to get a first-order approximation of this relationship is to estimate the correlations between trust and GDP per capita. This visualization provides evidence of this correlation, by plotting trust estimates from the World Value Survey against GDP per capita. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country. You can learn more about measures of national income in our [entry on GDP data](http://ourworldindata.org/gdp-data/). As it can be seen, there is a very strong positive relationship. Most academic studies find that this relationship remains after controlling for further characteristics. And similar results can also be obtained by looking at other measures of economic outcomes. Looking at outcomes across individuals, Guiso et al. (2006), for instance, report that trust has a positive and statistically significant correlation with the probability of becoming an entrepreneur, even after controlling for education, age and individual income. Their results also hold if religious affiliation of the respondents' ancestors is used as a proxy for trust – they thus argue that, since ancestors' religion correlates with respondents' trust attitudes, this instrumental variable approach can be taken as evidence that the estimated relationship goes in the suggested direction (i.e. that trust _leads_ to entrepreneurship, rather than the other way around). Other studies using instrumental variables have also found similarly large effects. Algan and Cahuc (2010){ref}Algan, Y., & Cahuc, P. (2010). [Inherited trust and growth](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&btnG=). The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} predict that, according to their estimates, African countries would have a five-fold increase in GDP per capita if they had the same level of inherited social attitudes as Sweden, after controlling for lagged GDP per capita, contemporaneous political environment and time-invariant country characteristics. Algan and Cahuc (2010) show that inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is significantly influenced by the country of origin and the timing of arrival of their forebears. This is their instrumental variable: the inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is used as a time-varying measure of inherited trust in the country of origin. This approach allows the authors to control for country fixed effects and interpret the effect of trust on growth _causally_. You can read a summary of their findings and approach in a [voxeu.org article written by the researchers](http://voxeu.org/article/trust-and-economic-development). Nunn and Wantchekon (2011){ref}Nunn, N., & Wantchekon, L. (2011). [The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa](https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/11986331/nunn-slave-trade.pdf?sequence=1). The American Economic Review, 101(7), 3221-3252. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41408736{/ref} provide evidence to explain mistrust in Africa: they show that current differences in trust levels within Africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades. More specifically, they show that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today – and using a variety of different econometric strategies, they claim that this relationship is causal. ##### Trust vs. GDP per capita, 2014 (or latest available data) {ref}Trust data corresponds to share of respondents in the World Value Survey agreeing with the statement "most people can be trusted". Possible answers include "Most people can be trusted", "Don't Know" and "Can't be too careful". GDP per capita data from Penn World Table.{/ref} <Image filename="Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita.png" alt="Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita"/> ### What is the relationship between trust and income inequality? Cross-country data, as well as within-country data, suggest that economic inequality is negatively related to trust. This visualization provides evidence of this relationship: it shows a scatter plot of trust estimates from the World Value Survey against income inequality measured by the Gini index. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country, with colors representing different world regions and dot sizes representing population. A Gini index of 0 reflects perfect equality, so the observed negative correlation in this graph implies that higher inequality is associated with lower trust. In other words, we can see that countries with higher income inequality also tend to report lower levels of trust. You can read more about income inequality and the Gini index in our entry on [income inequality](https://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-prosperity/income-inequality/#the-gini-coefficient). This negative relationship can be explained through various mechanisms: social ties may imply that people are more willing to trust those who are similar to themselves, or higher inequality may lead to conflicts over resources. The empirical work from Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., & Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from [here](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&rep=rep1&type=pdf){/ref} provides evidence in support of the former mechanism. Jordahl, H. (2007){ref}Jordahl, H. (2007). [Inequality and Trust](http://www.ifn.se/Wfiles/wp/wp715.pdf). Working Paper Series 715, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.{/ref} provides a discussion of these and other possible mechanisms. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/interpersonal-trust-vs-income-inequality"/> ## Trust and social outcomes ### Is there a link between education and trust? One of the reasons to justify government intervention in the market for education, is that education generates positive externalities.{ref}That positive externalities justify government intervention in the provision of education is essentially an efficiency argument. The logic is that individuals may not spend enough on education because they fail to internalize the positive effect that their education has on other people. But there are, of course, also equity arguments to justify government intervention in the provision of education – for instance, reducing inequality in education may be of intrinsic value, or may be instrumental in reducing inequalities in other outcomes.{/ref} This essentially means that investing in education yields both private and social returns. Private returns to education include higher wages and better employment prospects (as we discuss in our entry on [Skill Premium](https://ourworldindata.org/skill-premium-income-by-education/)). Social return include pro-social behaviour (e.g. volunteering, political participation) and interpersonal trust. This chart uses OECD results from the Survey of Adult Skills to show how self-reported trust in others correlates with educational attainment. More precisely, this chart plots the percentage-point difference in the likelihood of reporting to trust others, by education level of respondents. Those individuals with upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education are taken as the reference group, so the percentage point difference is expressed in relation to this group. As we can see, in all countries those individuals with tertiary education were by far the group most likely to report trusting others. And in almost every country, those with post-secondary non-tertiary education were more likely to trust others than those with primary or lower secondary education. The OECD's report [Education at a Glance (2015)](http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1) provides similar descriptive evidence for other social outcomes. The conclusion is that adults with higher qualifications are more likely to report desirable social outcomes, including good or excellent health, participation in volunteer activities, interpersonal trust, and political efficacy. And these results hold after controlling for literacy, gender, age and monthly earnings. ##### Likelihood of reporting to trust others, by educational attainment, OECD 2012 – Figure A8.4 in [Education at a Glance (2015)](http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1){ref}As per the source notes: "Percentage-point difference reflects the relative change of reporting to trust others compared to the reference category. For example, in Norway, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education reporting to trust others increases by 20 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education. Similarly, after accounting for literacy proficiency, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education increases by 16 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education."{/ref} <Image filename="OECD_Education_Trust.png" alt="OECD_Education_Trust"/> ### Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making Social cohesion is often defined as the capacity of a country to support peaceful collective decision making. This pair of plots, from the World Development Report (2013),{ref}[World Development Report 2013: Jobs](http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf). Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0.{/ref} show the correlation between the index of peaceful collective decision making, and two key measures of social cohesion at the micro level: trust and civic engagement. The index of peaceful collective decision making is a quantitative indicator that, for each country, aggregates data on political stability, the absence of violence, and voice and accountability. The figure shows a strong positive relationship: countries where people are more likely to report trusting others, are also countries where there is less violence and more political stability and accountability. ##### Share reporting trust in people and index of civic engagement vs index of peaceful collective decision making – World Development Report (2013){ref} [World Development Report 2013: Jobs](http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf). Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0. The original sources used by the World Development Report 2013 are the World Values Survey 2005 (database), World Values Survey Association, Stockholm; Worldwide Governance Indicators 2005. The original source notes: The analysis includes 56 countries (panel a) and 49 countries (panel b). “Index of peaceful collective decision making” is an average of indicators of “voice and accountability” and “political stability and the absence of violence” from the Worldwide Governance Indicators. “Index of civic engagement” is the average of responses to questions from the World Values Survey on (a) active membership in associations; (b) whether the respondent participated or would participate in a demonstration; and (c) whether the respondent would sign a petition. This work is available under the [Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0).{/ref} <Image filename="ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-–-world-development-report-20130.png" alt="Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making – World Development Report (2013)0"/> --- # Data Quality & Measurement --- ### How sensitive are estimates of interpersonal trust from attitudinal survey questions to changes in surveying methodologies? Attitudinal survey questions provide the main source of data to estimate interpersonal trust attitudes. Available evidence for countries with multiple such estimates, suggest that results are robust to the specific surveying methodologies. This scatter plot bears this out, by comparing cross-country estimates from different surveys. Specifically, this figure plots the estimated interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey, against interpersonal trust levels as measured by the European Social Survey and the Afrobarometer Survey. The resulting correlation is positive and very high. ##### Interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey and European Values Study, and the European Social Survey and Afrobarometer Survey – Inglehart & Welzel (2010){ref} The source is Inglehart & Welzel (2010) - [Changing Mass Priorities: The Link between Modernization and Democracy](https://nnov.hse.ru/data/2011/03/21/1211300861/ChangingMassPriorities.pdf). Reflections, June 2010, Vol. 8/No. 2.. N = 28 r = .92{/ref} <Image filename="ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels.png" alt="Inglehart and Welzel 2010 Interpersonal trust levels"/> ### Do trust estimates from attitudinal survey questions predict trusting _behaviour_? In an academic paper, Glaeser et al. (2000){ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). [Measuring trust](https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence). Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref} examine the predictive power of two types of survey questions: questions about trusting attitudes and questions about past trusting behavior. The authors examine the predictive power of these questions by comparing survey answers with actual trusting behaviour in an incentivised experimental setting with monetary rewards. They show that, while measures of past trusting behavior are better than the abstract attitudinal questions in predicting subjects' experimental choices, in general terms they are both weak predictors of trust. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict _trustworthiness_. In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves. --- # Data Sources --- ### OECD – Eurostat * **Data:** OECD data on trust is published in the _Society at a Glance - OECD Social Indicators_. This source relies on the estimates from Eurostat, specifically the EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) * **Geographical coverage:** OECD member states * **Time span:** Recent years * **Available at:** online [here](http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/society-at-a-glance-2011/trust_soc_glance-2011-26-en). ### The World Value Survey (WVS) * **Data:** Data on trust and many other social and cultural characteristics from cross-national and time-series surveys * **Geographical coverage:** The WVS covers almost 100 societies (nearly 90% of the world’s population). But not all countries have observations in each survey wave. * **Time span:** Several waves of surveys from 1981 onwards * **Available at:**[http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp](http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp) ### US General Social Survey * **Data:** Time-series data on trust and many other social and cultural characteristics * **Geographical coverage:** US * **Time span:** Yearly surveys since 1972 * **Available at:**[https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org](https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org) <AllCharts heading="Interactive charts on trust"/>

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        "rendered": "\n<p>Trust is a fundamental element of social capital \u2013 a key contributor to sustaining well-being outcomes, including economic development. In this entry we discuss available data on trust, as measured by attitudinal survey questions; that is, estimates from surveys asking about trusting attitudes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Global comparisons of trust attitudes around the world today suggest very large time-persistent cross-country heterogeneity. In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden more than 60% of respondents in the World Value Survey agree that &#8220;most people can be trusted&#8221;. And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Data from European countries shows that average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low \u2013 in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland. On the other hand, trust in the police is notably high, and in the majority of European countries \bpeople trust the police more than they trust each other.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Long-run data from the US, where the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972, suggests that people trust each other less today than 40 years ago. This decline in interpersonal trust in the US has been coupled with a long-run reduction in public trust in government \u2013 according to estimates compiled by the Pew Research Center since 1958, today trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Interpersonal trust attitudes correlate strongly with religious affiliation and upbringing. Some studies have shown that this strong positive relationship remains after controlling for several survey-respondent characteristics.{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., &amp; Zingales, L. (2006). <a href=\"https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23\">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p> This, in turn, has led researchers to use religion as a proxy for trust, in order to estimate the extent to which economic outcomes depend on trust attitudes. Estimates from these and other studies using an instrumental-variable approach, suggest that trust has a causal impact on economic outcomes.{ref}Algan, Y., &amp; Cahuc, P. (2010). <a href=\"https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;as_sdt=0%2C5&amp;q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&amp;btnG=\">Inherited trust and growth</a>. The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} This suggests that the remarkable cross-country heterogeneity in trust that we observe today, can explain a significant part of the historical differences in cross-country income levels.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Measures of trust from attitudinal survey questions remain the most common source of data on trust. Yet academic studies have shown that these measures of trust are generally weak predictors of actual trusting behaviour. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict <em>trustworthiness</em>. In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves.{ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., &amp; Soutter, C. L. (2000). <a href=\"https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence\">Measuring trust</a>. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<h3>How do countries around the world compare in terms of interpersonal trust?</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The World Value Survey allows cross-country comparisons of self-reported trust attitudes. This visualization shows estimates of the share of survey respondents agreeing with the statement &#8220;most people can be trusted&#8221;.{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked <em>&#8220;Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?&#8221; </em>. Possible answers include &#8220;Most people can be trusted&#8221;, &#8220;Don&#8217;t Know&#8221; and &#8220;Can&#8217;t be too careful&#8221;. We report figures of &#8220;Most people can be trusted&#8221; as a share of all answers. {/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In one extreme, in countries such as Norway and Sweden, more than 60% of respondents agree that most people can be trusted. And in the other extreme, in countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, less than 10% think that this is the case.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/self-reported-trust-attitudes?tab=map\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h4>How large are cross-country differences in estimates of interpersonal trust in Europe?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The results from the World Value Survey discussed above show that there are very large, time-persistent cross-country differences in the share of people who report trusting others, even within European countries. But are these cross-country differences similarly large if we look at average ratings of trust in a scale that allows for differences in intensity? The following visualization shows the average rating of trust in others across European countries, using data from Eurostat. In this case, respondents answer to the question &#8220;would you say that most people can be trusted?&#8221; using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, results are consistent \u2013 countries with high interpersonal trust in the World Value Survey also have high trust ratings in the Eurostat survey. Yet heterogeneity on the more granular scale used by Eurostat is somewhat smaller.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-rating-of-trust-in-others-selected-countries\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h4>How much do people in developed countries trust public institutions?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The OECD, using Eurostat data, provides estimates of trust in public institutions that are comparable to estimates of &#8216;trust in others&#8217; (i.e. interpersonal trust). The following visualization, taken from the OECD report <a href=\"http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en\">How&#8217;s life? (2015) </a>, shows average ratings of trust in (i) the political system, (ii) the police, and (iii) the legal system. These figures can be directly compared to those on interpersonal trust discussed in the <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-rating-of-trust-in-others-selected-countries\">visualization above</a>. In both cases figures rely on Eurostat data from the same survey, so respondents here also rate trust in institutions using an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 to 10. As it can be seen, average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low \u2013 in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The data suggests a broad correlation between trust in others, and trust in the different public institutions. Specifically, northern Europe (and Switzerland) report higher levels of trust, while southern and eastern Europe (and France) report lower levels across the board.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Mean trust in public institutions, European countries, 2013 \u2013 Figure 3.14 in the OECD report <a href=\"http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life-2015_how_life-2015-en\">How&#8217;s life? (2015) </a>{ref}Eurostat data. Response options range from 0 (\u2018\u2018no trust at all\u2019\u2019) to 10 (\u2018\u2018Complete trust\u2019\u2019).{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"378\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions-750x378.png\" alt=\"OECD(2015)_TrustInstitutions\" class=\"wp-image-8356\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions-750x378.png 750w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions-150x76.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions-400x202.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/OECD2015_TrustInstitutions-768x387.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h4>People in most European countries trust the police more than they trust each other</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>We mentioned above that the police is trusted more than other public institutions in most European countries. But do people in these countries trust the police more than they trust each other? This question is relevant, because trust in the police can become, in certain situations, an important substitute for interpersonal trust. This visualization plots Eurostat figures for trust in the police (y-axis) and trust in others (x-axis). The size of each dot represents national income (PPP-adjusted GDP per capita). We can see that there is a clear positive correlation; and in the majority of countries people report the same or higher trust in the police than trust in others. The clear exceptions are Greece, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and Slovenia \u2013 these are the countries that lie significantly below a hypothetical line with slope one (i.e. the line below which trust in others is higher than trust in the police). Denmark and the Netherlands, both with higher levels of trust than the mentioned countries, are also somewhat below this hypothetical line.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-in-others-vs-trust-in-police\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h4>Trust in OECD governments has been going up in recent years</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>From an inter-temporal perspective, data suggests that trust in public institutions has been going up recently in OECD countries. This visualization shows the OECD-average estimate of trust in governments over the period 2010\u20132020. The percentage of the population reporting confidence in the national government has increased from 35% in 2013 to 46% in 2020.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oecd-average-trust-in-governments\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h4>How much do people trust others, their government, journalists, and science?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The Wellcome Global Monitor is the world\u2019s largest study into how people around the world think and feel about science and major health challenges. It surveys over 140,000 people from more than 140 countries.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-neighborhood?country=HUN~MMR~USA~GBR~JPN~RUS~IND~CHN~NGA~IDN~BRA~FRA~DEU\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-who-trust-government\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-journalists-country?country=USA~RUS~IND~CHN~GBR~JPN~FRA~DEU~ITA~IDN~NGA~SWE\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-trust-science?country=USA~GBR~CHN~IND~RUS~JPN~FRA~BRA~DEU~IDN~NGA~SWE\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h3>Country-specific surveys</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>In the US, trust in the federal government is at historically low levels</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The Pew Research Center recently constructed a series of long-run estimates of trust in the government for the US, staring 1958. This visualization uses their data, to plot the share of people who say they can trust the government in Washington always or most of the time.{ref}The survey asked the question &#8220;How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right?&#8221; Answers included &#8220;Just about always&#8221;, &#8220;Most of the time&#8221;, or &#8220;Only some of the time&#8221;.{/ref} As it can be seen there are some clear patterns associated with political cycles, but in the long-run there is a negative trend. Today, trust in the government in the US is at historically low levels. The Pew Research Center has a <a href=\"http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/public-trust-in-government-1958-2015/\">dedicated website</a>, with many interesting visualizations \u2013 including disaggregated trends by ethnicity and political affiliation. Further details and analysis available in the report <a href=\"http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/11/11-23-2015-Governance-release.pdf\">Beyond Distrust: How Americans View their Government</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/public-trust-in-government\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h4>In the US, people trust each other less now than 40 years ago</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>In the US, the General Social Survey (GSS) has been gathering information about trust attitudes since 1972. To our knowledge, this is the longest available time-series on interpersonal trust estimates in the world. This visualization uses this source to show the evolution of trust in the US. Specifically, this plot shows the share of respondents agreeing with the statement &#8220;most people can be trusted&#8221; in the surveys 1972-2014.{ref}To be precise, respondents are asked <em>&#8220;Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can&#8217;t be too careful in dealing with people?&#8221;</em>. Available replies are &#8220;Can trust&#8221;, &#8220;Cannot trust&#8221;, &#8220;Depends&#8221; and &#8220;Don&#8217;t Know&#8221;. We report figures of &#8220;Can trust&#8221; as a share of all answers. {/ref} As we can see, there are short-term fluctuations, but people in the US seem to trust each other less today than 40 years ago.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/trust-attitudes-in-the-us\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h4>In the UK, trust in others has remained relatively stable over the last couple of decades \u2013 but other measures of social capital have not</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Trust is a key element of social capital \u2013 but it is not the only one. Data from the UK suggests that different aspects of social capital change in time at different rates. This chart, from the <a href=\"http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk\">Centre for Social Investigation</a> at Nuffield College, Oxford, shows that in the UK trust in other people fluctuates year by year, but there is no trend over the last couple of decades. This is consistent with the figures from the World Value Survey, where the UK shows little variation between the 1998 and 2009 surveys. Interestingly, however, associations with voluntary organisations declined significantly over the same period \u2013 the chart shows that the percentage of the UK population that is active with one or more organization fell from 52% in 1993 to 43% in 2012.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Trends in four measures of social capital, UK, 1991-2013 \u2013 Figure 2 in Centre for Social Investigation (2015){ref} This graph is taken from the report <a href=\"http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/CSI_15_The_uneven_distribution.pdf\">CSI 15: The uneven distribution and decline of social capital in Britain</a>. The reported underlying data sources are the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the UK Household Longitudinal Survey (UKHLS), the Citizenship/ Community Life Survey (CLS), and the Health Survey for England (HSE){/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"410\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital-750x410.png\" alt=\"CSI15_BritishSocialCapital\" class=\"wp-image-8414\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital-750x410.png 750w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital-150x82.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital-400x219.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/CSI15_BritishSocialCapital-768x420.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h4>In the UK trust in experts has mostly increased</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The chart shows data on trust in various groups of experts in the UK. The data is based on surveys that go back to 1983.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are large differences between professions \u2013 trust in journalists is low, while trust in professors, teachers, and doctors is high.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For all groups \u2013 with the exception of clergy/priests \u2013 the levels of trust have inceased snce the first surveys were conducted.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"800\" height=\"406\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-800x406.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-42980\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-800x406.png 800w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-400x203.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-150x76.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-768x390.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-1536x780.png 1536w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-11-at-19.08.37-2048x1040.png 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<h4>In Sweden, trust is not only very high, but also remarkably stable</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The data from Eurostat and the World Value Survey shows that Sweden is one of the countries with the highest levels of trust globally. This visualization from the <a href=\"http://som.gu.se\">SOM institute</a> \u2013 an independent survey research organisation at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden \u2013, shows that interpersonal trust in Sweden is not only high, but also very stable across time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this visualisation we see the degree of trust in others, raging from 0 to 10. We can see that estimates are very persistent \u2013 the share of individuals rating trust as low (0-3), medium (4-6) and high (7-10) has not changed significantly over the last two decades.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Trust in people, Sweden, 1996-2015 \u2013 SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at <a href=\"http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf\">http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf</a>{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"462\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople-750x462.png\" alt=\"SOM_SwedishTrustPeople\" class=\"wp-image-8418\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople-750x462.png 750w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople-150x92.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople-400x247.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPeople-768x473.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<p>The data from the SOM in Sweden also allows an inter-temporal analysis of other measures of trust. This visualization shows estimates of general trust in politicians. In this case stability is reflected in the fact that political cycles are not associated with accentuated fluctuations. This seems to contrast with the data from the US, where public trust in government seems to be highly cyclical.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>General trust in politicians, Sweden, 1998-2015 \u2013 SOM (2015){ref}SOM report Swedish Trends 1986-2015, available online at <a href=\"http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf\">http://som.gu.se/digitalAssets/1581/1581024_swedish-trends-1986-2015.pdf</a>{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"450\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians-750x450.png\" alt=\"SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians\" class=\"wp-image-8419\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians-750x450.png 750w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians-150x90.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians-400x240.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians-768x461.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/SOM_SwedishTrustPoliticians.png 1018w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h3>Trust and culture</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>Do trust attitudes correlate with religion?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>A number of academic studies have explored the link between religious beliefs and self-reported trust attitudes. This figure, from Guiso et al. (2006),{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., &amp; Zingales, L. (2006). <a href=\"https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23\">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} summarizes the results from one such study using data from the World Values Survey. Specifically, the bars in this figure represent the effect of religious affiliation on trust, in percent of the sample mean of trust relative to &#8220;no religious affiliation&#8221;. The reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). Since the data is available for the same country over several years, the authors also control for country-specific time-invariant characteristics (the so-called country fixed effects).</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Taking these results at face value, the reported effects suggest that being raised religiously raises the level of trust by 2.6 percent; and regularly attending religious services (the author&#8217;s definition of being &#8220;religious&#8221; for the purpose of the figure), raises the level of trust by another 20 percent. Similarly, these results suggest that the effect of religion differs across denominations: self-reported Catholic and Protestant religious affiliation has a positive effect on trust; while Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist affiliation does not.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>As usual, these results have to be interpreted with caution, since reported figures do not control for unobservable time-varying factors that may simultaneously affect attitudes towards religion and trust; in other words, it is likely that there are unaccounted sources of bias that undermine the causal interpretation of the coefficients. Indeed, other studies using attitudinal survey questions on trust have found different results. For instance, Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., &amp; Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from <a href=\"http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&amp;rep=rep1&amp;type=pdf\">here</a>{/ref} use data from the General Social Survey in the US, and find that religious affiliation is not statistically related to trust after controlling for further characteristics, such as whether survey respondents had a history of traumatic experiences.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Effect of religious affiliation on trust relative to no religious affiliation \u2013 Guiso et al. (2006){ref}Reported effects correspond to estimated coefficients in a regression where the dependent variable is trust in others (i.e. a variable equal to 1 if participants report that most people can be trusted), and there are controls for demographic characteristics (health, gender, age, education, social class, income). The underlying source of the data used for the regressions is the European Values Survey and World Values Survey 1981\u201384, 1990\u201393, 1995\u201397. Further details from the authors: Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., &amp; Zingales, L. (2006). <a href=\"https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23\">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"434\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion-750x434.png\" alt=\"GuisoEtal(2006)_TrustReligion\" class=\"wp-image-8362\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion-750x434.png 750w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion-150x87.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion-400x231.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/GuisoEtal2006_TrustReligion-768x444.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h3>Trust and economic outcomes</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>What is the relationship between trust and GDP?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>In a much cited article, Arrow (1972){ref}Arrow, K. J. (1972). Gifts and exchanges. Philosophy &amp; Public Affairs, 343-362.{/ref} says that &#8220;Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust, certainly any transaction conducted over a period of time.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The extent to which trust is linked to economic development has been the subject of many academic papers in the economics literature on growth (see Guiso et al. 2006,{ref}Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., &amp; Zingales, L. (2006). <a href=\"https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.20.2.23\">Does culture affect economic outcomes?</a>. The journal of economic perspectives, 20(2), 23-48.{/ref} Algan and Cahuc 2010,{ref}Algan, Y., &amp; Cahuc, P. (2010). <a href=\"https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;as_sdt=0%2C5&amp;q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&amp;btnG=\">Inherited trust and growth</a>. The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} and the references therein). A common way to get a first-order approximation of this relationship is to estimate the correlations between trust and GDP per capita. This visualization provides evidence of this correlation, by plotting trust estimates from the World Value Survey against GDP per capita. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country. You can learn more about measures of national income in our <a href=\"http://ourworldindata.org/gdp-data/\">entry on GDP data</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>As it can be seen, there is a very strong positive relationship. Most academic studies find that this relationship remains after controlling for further characteristics. And similar results can also be obtained by looking at other measures of economic outcomes. Looking at outcomes across individuals, Guiso et al. (2006), for instance, report that trust has a positive and statistically significant correlation with the probability of becoming an entrepreneur, even after controlling for education, age and individual income. Their results also hold if religious affiliation of the respondents&#8217; ancestors is used as a proxy for trust \u2013 they thus argue that, since ancestors&#8217; religion correlates with respondents&#8217; trust attitudes, this instrumental variable approach can be taken as evidence that the estimated relationship goes in the suggested direction (i.e. that trust <em>leads</em> to entrepreneurship, rather than the other way around).</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other studies using instrumental variables have also found similarly large effects. Algan and Cahuc (2010){ref}Algan, Y., &amp; Cahuc, P. (2010). <a href=\"https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;as_sdt=0%2C5&amp;q=doi%3A10.1257%2Faer.100.5.2060&amp;btnG=\">Inherited trust and growth</a>. The American Economic Review, 100(5), 2060-2092.{/ref} predict that, according to their estimates, African countries would have a five-fold increase in GDP per capita if they had the same level of inherited social attitudes as Sweden, after controlling for lagged GDP per capita, contemporaneous political environment and time-invariant country characteristics.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Algan and Cahuc (2010) show that inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is significantly influenced by the country of origin and the timing of arrival of their forebears. This is their instrumental variable: the inherited trust of descendants of US immigrants is used as a time-varying measure of inherited trust in the country of origin. This approach allows the authors to control for country fixed effects and interpret the effect of trust on growth <em>causally</em>. You can read a summary of their findings and approach in a <a href=\"http://voxeu.org/article/trust-and-economic-development\">voxeu.org article written by the researchers</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nunn and Wantchekon (2011){ref}Nunn, N., &amp; Wantchekon, L. (2011). <a href=\"https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/11986331/nunn-slave-trade.pdf?sequence=1\">The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa</a>. The American Economic Review, 101(7), 3221-3252. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41408736{/ref} provide evidence to explain mistrust in Africa: they show that current differences in trust levels within Africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades. More specifically, they show that individuals whose ancestors were heavily raided during the slave trade are less trusting today \u2013 and using a variety of different econometric strategies, they claim that this relationship is causal.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Trust vs. GDP per capita, 2014 (or latest available data) {ref}Trust data corresponds to share of respondents in the World Value Survey agreeing with the statement &#8220;most people can be trusted&#8221;. Possible answers include &#8220;Most people can be trusted&#8221;, &#8220;Don&#8217;t Know&#8221; and &#8220;Can&#8217;t be too careful&#8221;. GDP per capita data from Penn World Table.{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"598\" height=\"550\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-598x550.png\" alt=\"Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita\" class=\"wp-image-8422\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-598x550.png 598w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-150x138.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-400x368.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/07/Trust-vs-GDP-per-capita-768x706.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 598px) 100vw, 598px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h4>What is the relationship between trust and income inequality?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Cross-country data, as well as within-country data, suggest that economic inequality is negatively related to trust. This visualization provides evidence of this relationship: it shows a scatter plot of trust estimates from the World Value Survey against income inequality measured by the Gini index. Each dot on this scatter-plot corresponds to a different country, with colors representing different world regions and dot sizes representing population. A Gini index of 0 reflects perfect equality, so the observed negative correlation in this graph implies that higher inequality is associated with lower trust. In other words, we can see that countries with higher income inequality also tend to report lower levels of trust. You can read more about income inequality and the Gini index in our entry on <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-prosperity/income-inequality/#the-gini-coefficient\">income inequality</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This negative relationship can be explained through various mechanisms: social ties may imply that people are more willing to trust those who are similar to themselves, or higher inequality may lead to conflicts over resources. The empirical work from Alesina and La Ferrara (2000){ref}Alesina, A., &amp; Ferrara, E. L. (2000). The determinants of trust (No. w7621). National bureau of economic research. Available online from <a href=\"http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.321.9205&amp;rep=rep1&amp;type=pdf\">here</a>{/ref} provides evidence in support of the former mechanism. Jordahl, H. (2007){ref}Jordahl, H. (2007). <a href=\"http://www.ifn.se/Wfiles/wp/wp715.pdf\">Inequality and Trust</a>. Working Paper Series 715, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.{/ref} provides a discussion of these and other possible mechanisms.</p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/interpersonal-trust-vs-income-inequality\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n<h3>Trust and social outcomes</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4>Is there a link between education and trust?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the reasons to justify government intervention in the market for education, is that education generates positive externalities.{ref}That positive externalities justify government intervention in the provision of education is essentially an efficiency argument. The logic is that individuals may not spend enough on education because they fail to internalize the positive effect that their education has on other people. But there are, of course, also equity arguments to justify government intervention in the provision of education \u2013 for instance, reducing inequality in education may be of intrinsic value, or may be instrumental in reducing inequalities in other outcomes.{/ref} This essentially means that investing in education yields both private and social returns. Private returns to education include higher wages and better employment prospects (as we discuss in our entry on <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/skill-premium-income-by-education/\">Skill Premium</a>). Social return include pro-social behaviour (e.g. volunteering, political participation) and interpersonal trust.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This chart uses OECD results from the Survey of Adult Skills to show how self-reported trust in others correlates with educational attainment. More precisely, this chart plots the percentage-point difference in the likelihood of reporting to trust others, by education level of respondents. Those individuals with upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education are taken as the reference group, so the percentage point difference is expressed in relation to this group. As we can see, in all countries those individuals with tertiary education were by far the group most likely to report trusting others.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And in almost every country, those with post-secondary non-tertiary education were more likely to trust others than those with primary or lower secondary education. The OECD&#8217;s report <a href=\"http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1\">Education at a Glance (2015)</a> provides similar descriptive evidence for other social outcomes. The conclusion is that adults with higher qualifications are more likely to report desirable social outcomes, including good or excellent health, participation in volunteer activities, interpersonal trust, and political efficacy. And these results hold after controlling for literacy, gender, age and monthly earnings.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Likelihood of reporting to trust others, by educational attainment, OECD 2012 \u2013 Figure A8.4 in <a href=\"http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/education/education-at-a-glance-2015_eag-2015-en#page1\">Education at a Glance (2015)</a>{ref}As per the source notes: &#8220;Percentage-point difference reflects the relative change of reporting to trust others compared to the reference category. For example, in Norway, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education reporting to trust others increases by 20 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education. Similarly, after accounting for literacy proficiency, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education increases by 16 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education.&#8221;{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"441\" src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust-750x441.png\" alt=\"OECD_Education_Trust\" class=\"wp-image-8134\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust-750x441.png 750w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust-150x88.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust-400x235.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2016/06/OECD_Education_Trust-768x451.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h4>Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Social cohesion is often defined as the capacity of a country to support peaceful collective decision making. This pair of plots, from the World Development Report (2013),{ref}<a href=\"http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf\">World Development Report 2013: Jobs</a>. Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0.{/ref} show the correlation between the index of peaceful collective decision making, and two key measures of social cohesion at the micro level: trust and civic engagement. The index of peaceful collective decision making is a quantitative indicator that, for each country, aggregates data on political stability, the absence of violence, and voice and accountability.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The figure shows a strong positive relationship: countries where people are more likely to report trusting others, are also countries where there is less violence and more political stability and accountability.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Share reporting trust in people and index of civic engagement vs index of peaceful collective decision making&nbsp;\u2013&nbsp;World Development Report (2013){ref} <a href=\"http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTNWDR2013/Resources/8258024-1320950747192/8260293-1322665883147/WDR_2013_Report.pdf\">World Development Report 2013: Jobs</a>. Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9575-2. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0. The original sources used by the World Development Report 2013 are the World Values Survey 2005 (database), World Values Survey Association, Stockholm; Worldwide Governance Indicators 2005. The original source notes: The analysis includes 56 countries (panel a) and 49 countries (panel b). \u201cIndex of peaceful collective decision making\u201d is an average of indicators of \u201cvoice and accountability\u201d and \u201cpolitical stability and the absence of violence\u201d from the Worldwide Governance Indicators. \u201cIndex of civic engagement\u201d is the average of responses to questions from the World Values Survey on (a) active membership in associations; (b) whether the respondent participated or would participate in a demonstration; and (c) whether the respondent would sign a petition. This work is available under the <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0\">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)</a>.{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-\u2013-world-development-report-20130.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"750\" height=\"370\" src=\"http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-\u2013-world-development-report-20130-750x370.png\" alt=\"Trust and civic engagement go together with peaceful collective decision making \u2013\u00a0World Development Report (2013)0\" class=\"wp-image-4354\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-\u2013-world-development-report-20130-750x370.png 750w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-\u2013-world-development-report-20130-150x74.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-\u2013-world-development-report-20130-400x197.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_trust-and-civic-engagement-go-together-with-peaceful-collective-decision-making-\u2013-world-development-report-20130.png 1127w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h2>Data Quality &amp; Measurement</h2>\n\n\n\n<h4>How sensitive are estimates of interpersonal trust from attitudinal survey questions to changes in surveying methodologies?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Attitudinal survey questions provide the main source of data to estimate interpersonal trust attitudes. Available evidence for countries with multiple such estimates, suggest that results are robust to the specific surveying methodologies. This scatter plot bears this out, by comparing cross-country estimates from different surveys. Specifically, this figure plots the estimated interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey, against interpersonal trust levels as measured by the European Social Survey and the Afrobarometer Survey. The resulting correlation is positive and very high.</p>\n\n\n\n<h6>Interpersonal trust levels as measured by the World Values Survey and European Values Study, and the European Social Survey and Afrobarometer Survey&nbsp;\u2013 Inglehart &amp; Welzel (2010){ref} The source is Inglehart &amp; Welzel (2010) &#8211; <a href=\"https://nnov.hse.ru/data/2011/03/21/1211300861/ChangingMassPriorities.pdf\">Changing Mass Priorities: The Link between Modernization and Democracy</a>. Reflections, June 2010, Vol. 8/No. 2.. N = 28 r = .92{/ref}</h6>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"557\" height=\"550\" src=\"http://ourworldindata.org/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-557x550.png\" alt=\"Inglehart and Welzel 2010 Interpersonal trust levels\" class=\"wp-image-5987\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-557x550.png 557w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-150x148.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-400x395.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-32x32.png 32w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-64x64.png 64w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels-96x96.png 96w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2013/10/ourworldindata_inglehart-and-welzel-2010-interpersonal-trust-levels.png 1345w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 557px) 100vw, 557px\" /></a></figure></div>\n\n\n\n<h4>Do trust estimates from attitudinal survey questions predict trusting <em>behaviour</em>?</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>In an academic paper, Glaeser et al. (2000){ref}Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., &amp; Soutter, C. L. (2000). <a href=\"https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4481497/Laibson_MeasuringTrust.pdf?sequence\">Measuring trust</a>. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 811-846.{/ref} examine the predictive power of two types of survey questions: questions about trusting attitudes and questions about past trusting behavior. The authors examine the predictive power of these questions by comparing survey answers with actual trusting behaviour in an incentivised experimental setting with monetary rewards. They show that, while measures of past trusting behavior are better than the abstract attitudinal questions in predicting subjects&#8217; experimental choices, in general terms they are both weak predictors of trust. Interestingly, however, questions about trusting attitudes do seem to predict <em>trustworthiness</em>. In other words, people who say they trust other people tend to be trustworthy themselves.<br><br></p>\n\n\n\n<h2>Data Sources</h2>\n\n\n\n<h4>OECD \u2013 Eurostat</h4>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Data:</strong> OECD data on trust is published in the <em>Society at a Glance &#8211; OECD Social Indicators</em>. This source relies on the estimates from Eurostat, specifically the EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC)</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> OECD member states</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong> Recent years</li><li><strong>Available at:</strong> online <a href=\"http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/society-at-a-glance-2011/trust_soc_glance-2011-26-en\">here</a>.</li></ul>\n\n\n\n<h4>The World Value Survey (WVS)</h4>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Data:</strong> Data on trust and many other social and cultural characteristics from cross-national and time-series surveys</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> The WVS covers almost 100 societies (nearly 90% of the world\u2019s population). But not all countries have observations in each survey wave.</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong>&nbsp; Several waves of surveys from 1981 onwards</li><li><strong>Available at:</strong>&nbsp;<a href=\"http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp\">http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp</a></li></ul>\n\n\n\n<h4>US General Social Survey</h4>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong>Data:</strong> Time-series data on trust and many other social and cultural characteristics</li><li><strong>Geographical coverage:</strong> US</li><li><strong>Time span:</strong>&nbsp;Yearly surveys since 1972</li><li><strong>Available at:</strong> <a href=\"https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org\">https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org</a></li></ul>\n",
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    "excerpt": {
        "rendered": "Trust is essential for community, wellbeing, and effective cooperation. How does trust vary between different societies and locations and what matters for levels of trust?",
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    "date_gmt": "2016-07-22T20:55:11",
    "modified": "2023-03-13T17:36:28",
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    "menu_order": 357,
    "ping_status": "closed",
    "authors_name": [
        "Esteban Ortiz-Ospina"
    ],
    "modified_gmt": "2023-03-13T17:36:28",
    "comment_status": "closed",
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