The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

Trust, welfare states and income equality: Sorting out the causality

På svenska

Author

Summary, in English

The cross-country correlation between social trust and income equality is well documented, but few studies examine the direction of causality. We show theoretically that by facilitating cooperation, trust may lead to more equal outcomes, while the feedback from inequality to trust is ambiguous. Using a structural equation model estimated on a large country sample, we find that trust has a positive effect on both market and net income equality. Larger welfare states lead to higher net equality but neither net income equality nor welfare state size seems to have a causal effect on trust. We conclude that while trust facilitates welfare state policies that may reduce net inequality, this decrease in inequality does not increase trust. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Publishing year

2014

Language

English

Pages

183-199

Publication/Series

European Journal of Political Economy

Volume

35

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Tranfer Verlag, Regensburg, FRG

Topic

  • Economics

Keywords

  • Social trust
  • Inequality
  • Welfare state

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0176-2680