TRUST AND WELL-BEING

This paper presents new evidence linking trust and subjective well-being, based primarily on data from the Gallup World Poll and cycle 17 of the Canadian General Social Survey. Because several of the general explanations for subjective well-being examined here show large and significant linkages to both household income and various measures of the trust, it is possible to value trust in terms of the amount of income that would have the same life satisfaction effect as a given change in several different measures of trust. The key measures of trust studied include general social trust, trust in co-workers, trust in neighbours, and trust in police. Some of the trust data from national surveys and the Gallup World Poll involve respondents estimating the chances that a lost wallet would be returned to them if found by different individuals, including neighbours, police and strangers. Our results reveal sufficiently strong linkages between trust and well-being to support much more study of how trust can be built and maintained, or repaired where it has been damaged. The paper thus uses data from Canadian surveys to analyze personal and neighbourhood characteristics, including education, migration history and mobility that underlie the very large differences in trust levels among individuals