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Author: Eirich, Gregory M.
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Eirich, Gregory M. Li, Tianshu |
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Will Promoting Education Really Increase People's Trust Levels? A Test Utilizing a Sample of American Siblings Presented: Chicago IL, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2015 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: American Sociological Association Keyword(s): Educational Attainment; Family Characteristics; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Siblings; Trust Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. It is well established that individuals who have higher levels of educational attainment also have higher levels of generalized trust, which means they express a stronger belief that people "in general" -- strangers, co-workers, neighbors, and so on -- will not take advantage of them. Likewise, it is well established that countries with higher-educated citizenries also have higher levels of aggregate trust; and researchers have linked these higher trust levels to many positive outcomes, including increased GDP, improved health and decreased corruption. Scholars have reasoned that increased schooling can increase an individual's generalized trust by promoting universal values, ingraining ethical habits and carving out social circles where people feel "safe" to let their guard down. Yet few researchers have thought to actually test if an increase in educational attainment produces an increase in generalized trust in some stronger causal sense. By comparing siblings to each other, we can get some leverage on this issue because siblings can essentially serve as "controls" for each other. Running fixed effects regressions on the NLSY79, we find that among siblings, the positive relationship between education and trust largely evaporates. Educational attainment per se, therefore, does not appear to be responsible for increases in generalized trust, but rather unmeasured family characteristics (whether tied to genetics or family-specific socialization practices and values) that siblings share. These results are so surprising because they suggest higher education has a negligible role in promoting generalized trust among Americans, contrary to what many scholars previously hypothesized. |
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Bibliography Citation
Eirich, Gregory M. and Tianshu Li. "Will Promoting Education Really Increase People's Trust Levels? A Test Utilizing a Sample of American Siblings." Presented: Chicago IL, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 2015. |