Growing Apart, Losing Trust? The Impact of Inequality on Social Capital
IMF Working Papers, August 22, 2016
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- Growing Apart, Losing Trust? The Impact of Inequality on Social Capital
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: Eric D Gould, Alexander Hijzen
- Published: August 22, 2016
- Series: IMF Working Papers
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9781475529487.001
Summary
- Research question: whether the downward trend in social capital (trust) responds to increasing gaps in income.
- Datasets used:
- American National Election Survey (ANES) for the United States.
- European Social Survey (ESS) for Europe.
- Temporal and spatial variation exploited:
- United States: variation across states and over time (1980-2010).
- Europe (ESS): variation across countries and over time (2002-2012).
- Central conclusion: overall inequality lowers an individual’s sense of trust in others in the United States as well as in other advanced economies.
Data and methods
- Data sources: ANES (United States) and ESS (Europe).
- Time coverage:
- United States analysis: 1980-2010.
- Europe analysis: 2002-2012.
- Analytical approach: exploitation of variation across subnational units (states) and countries and over time to identify relationships between inequality and measured trust.
Key findings and statistics
- Main empirical findings:
- Overall inequality lowers an individual’s sense of trust in others in the United States and in other advanced economies.
- These effects mainly stem from residual inequality, and from inequality in the bottom of the distribution.
- Conceptual link: residual inequality may be more closely associated with the notion of fairness.
- Policy-relevant implication: since trust has been linked to economic growth and development in the existing literature, these findings suggest an important, indirect way through which inequality affects macro-economic performance.
- Publication metadata:
- Authors: Eric D Gould, Alexander Hijzen
- Date: August 22, 2016
- Series: Working Paper No. 2016/176
- Issue: 176
- Volume: 2016
- Pages: 46
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9781475529487.001
- ISBN: 9781475529487
- ISSN: 1018-5941
Subjects and keywords
- Subjects: Aging, Disposable income, Education, Income inequality, National accounts, Personal income, Population and demographics
- Keywords: Aging, center, crime rate, Disposable income, earnings, Europe, Income inequality, marital status, number, percent immigrant, Personal income, poverty rate, redistribution, social capital, trust government index, trust govt, trusts government, WP
IMF Working Paper — Growing Apart, Losing Trust? The Impact of Inequality on Social Capital by Eric D Gould and Alexander Hijzen (August 22, 2016), Working Paper No. 2016/176, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9781475529487.001
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- Growing Apart, Losing Trust? The Impact of Inequality on Social Capital