trust, welfare states and income equality fk 2015
TRANSCRIPT
Trust, Welfare States and Income Equality: Sorting out the causality
Andreas Bergh, LU & IFNChristian Bjørnskov, Aarhus University
Trust Income equality
Welfare state
Trust -> Welfare state size: Bergh & Bjørnskov (2011) using instruments (temperature, constitutional monarchy, grammar)
Trust -> Welfare state size: Bjørnskov & Svendsen (2012) using US 3rd generation immigrants
Welfare state universality -> trust (Kumlin & Rothstein, individual level data)
Historical Trust Levels Predict the Current Sizeof the Welfare State
Excludes outliers
ten-year averages of government ideology, taken from the Database of PoliticalInstitutions
KYKLOS, 2011:1, p. 1–19.
• Trust -> welfare state -> equality• ... equality -> trust (positive feed back dynamic)• or• trust -> equality• ?
A structural equations model
Monarchy
Intensity of religiosity
Kuznets curves
Rel. composition
Legal origin
IQTrust Inequality
Postcommunist
Nordic country
Regions
GDP per capita and its squared term, the degree of democracy and its squared term), dummies capturing variations in religious affiliation, and a control for common law countries, IQ scores to capture inequality arising from skills-based technological progress.
Four conclusions
• Trust aid countries in building and maintaining welfare states (Nannestad 2008, Rothstein 2001)
• Welfare states increase equality
• Trust increases equality - also when controlling for welfare state size!
• Welfare states do not increase trust