Social policies and trust in the social security system

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the effects of welfare states on trust in social security systems. The analysis is based on estimating the effects of all three dimensions on one specific element of institutional trust. The analysis thus demonstrates that there is strong conformity in the direction and the size of the effects of social policies between institutional trust and trust in social security systems. Both forms of trust develop the same pattern of relations with different measures of welfare state development. Trust in institutions can be considered a good proxy for trust in social security systems. Although it is a synthetic construct, institutional trust approximates possible changes in levels of trust in social security systems as the result of state intervention in society in the form of social policies. However, institutional trust must be regarded as a wider concept compared to trust in social security systems since it is based on confidence in various public welfare state institutions while including trust in social security systems as one of its elements