Three Worlds of Trust: A Longitudinal Study of Welfare States, Life-Course Risks, and Social Trust

Social trust, the belief that most other people are trustworthy, leads to many important societal benefits, including higher economic growth, lower levels of corruption and better public health. However, very little is known about when and why individuals' trust changes. This knowledge is vital to halt the trend of declining social trust currently plaguing many countries. Our project will fill this research lacuna. We take a life-course perspective whereby individuals' trust changes in response to critical life-course events, such as job loss, divorce, income reduction, or worsening health conditions. We will analyze data from three countries, each representing different types of welfare state regimes: Germany (conservative), Norway (social democratic) and the United States (liberal). We expect to find that negative life-course events will erode social trust in contexts where the state provides little or no welfare buffer. We will test this argument by analyzing longitudinal data from the German Socio-economic Panel, the Norwegian Citizen Panel and the U.S. General Social Survey. All three surveys observe individuals at multiple points in time. The results from this research will provide social policy makers with much-needed information about the most effective means of protecting and increasing social trust.

This international research project is funded by a generous grant from Riksbankens Jubileumsfonds (NHS14-2035:1)