Trust and wealth are correlated: Recently, I used World Values Survey data to estimate the level of trust in countries in several regions of the world. But how close is the connection between trust and economic success? I calculated the correlation between the percent saying that people can be trusted and per capita GDP (taken from Nationmaster) across 82 countries. It's .45, and .51 if we omit Luxembourg (which is a real outlier on GDP).

It almost looks like a case of necessary but not sufficient. Several poor countries are trusting, but of the wealthy countries, only Singapore, Finland, and France are distrustful. And it could be that in some of these poor countries that are very different culturally from the West, there may be translation problems, or respondents might be giving socially acceptable answers.

More on trust: As a follow-up to the last post, I wondered about the level of trust in Asian and Muslim countries. Based on World Values Survey data, here are the percent who say that people can generally be trusted:


Percent who say you can trust people

World 29.6

Iran 65.3
Saudi Arabia 53.0
Indonesia 51.6
Iraq 47.6
Egypt 37.9
Pakistan 27.9
Morocco 23.5
Bangladesh 22.2
Azerbaijan 20.5
Turkey 12.6
Algeria 11.2

China 55.2
Japan 42.9
Taiwan 38.2
Vietnam 41.1
India 37.9
South Korea 32.1
Philippines 7.0

Muslim countries are all over the place--they are about as diverse as the whole sample of countries. Numbers like that in Iraq surprise me, given what Steve Sailer has written about how consanguinity in Muslim countries undermines trust beyond the family.

India is the trusting one among South Asian countries. The Phillipines is the exception in Southeast Asia, and East Asia is trusting.

NAMs don't trust: Hispanics and especially blacks tend to be suspicious people. According to the GSS, 40% of all Americans say that people can generally be trusted, but only 17% of blacks, 24% of Mex-Ams, and 16% of Puerto Ricans feel that way. Many of them are quick to think that someone is taking advantage of them; that someone is discriminating against them. Now, this could be due to their experience in America. Being dominated by another people could easily lead to distrust. Or it could be an ethnic trait.

The World Values Survey asked people all around the world the same question. Thirty percent of all respondents agreed that most people can be trusted. Here are the percentages who agreed in countries with high percentages of blacks or Hispanics:


Percent who say people can be trusted

Dominican Republic 26.4
Nigeria 22.1
South Africa 19.1
Zimbabwe 11.9
Tanzania 8.1
Uganda 7.6


Mexico 28.9
Chile 22.5
Argentina 20.3
Venezuela 14.8
El Salvador 14.6
Puerto Rico 12.4
Columbia 10.8
Peru 8.2

All black and Latino countries sampled have below-average numbers. Now, some might explain this lack of trust as the legacy of colonialism or a reaction to exploitative social conditions, but whatever the case, it seems to be a widespread, reliable characteristic. This does not bode well for long-term race relations in America. Trust is an essential ingredient for a thriving society.