Interpersonal trust vs. Price level
Holds up after adjusting for income
Across 103 countries, Interpersonal trust and Price level rise and fall together at r = +0.67 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to +0.44 (q = 0.0078, allowing for the many pairs tested). Much of the first figure is that both measures rise with national income, but a moderate positive link remains.
Comparing countries across the middle half of interpersonal trust, 12.9% to 32.3% of respondents, price level is 0.2 ratio to the US higher at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.108 ratio to the US.
Link before adjusting (r)+0.666p = 1.7e-14 · 103 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.437p = 4.5e-6 · likely range [+0.26, +0.58]
p, allowing for regions0.000standard error 0.054 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.008across 18,622 pairs
How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.
Interpersonal trust · % of respondentslink with income +0.66 · high
Price level · ratio to the US (US = 1)link with income +0.72 · high
Both of these rise and fall closely with national income, so a strong link between them before adjusting was close to certain. Read the adjusted figure, not the first one.
“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.
Every country as a dot
best-fit line line after adjusting
Four ways to measure the link
| Method | r | p | Countries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard (Pearson), not adjusted | +0.666 | 1.7e-14 | 103 |
| By rank (Spearman), not adjusted | +0.522 | 1.5e-8 | 103 |
| Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income | +0.437 | 4.5e-6 | 103 |
| By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income | -0.023 | 0.818 | 103 |
The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 103 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.229 (a minus sign means it grew).
How solid is it?
Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.406 (without ISL) to +0.468 (without BLR). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: ISL (-0.031).
Within each region
Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.
| n | r | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| East Asia & Pacific | 15 | +0.44 | |
| Europe & Central Asia | 47 | +0.50 | |
| Latin America & Caribbean | 13 | +0.48 | |
| Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan | 13 | +0.34 |
By income third
If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.
| n | r | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Poorest third | 35 | -0.33 | |
| Middle third | 34 | -0.13 | |
| Richest third | 34 | +0.64 |
By largest religious group
Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.
| n | r | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Christians | 61 | +0.53 | |
| Muslims | 27 | +0.02 |
By last European coloniser
Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.
| n | r | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Never a European colony | 15 | +0.30 | |
| Spain | 12 | +0.08 | |
| United Kingdom | 24 | +0.41 |
By official ideology
Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.
| n | r | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Nationalist | 16 | -0.34 | |
| No strong official ideology | 72 | +0.60 |
By party system
Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.
| n | r | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| A few parties banned | 12 | -0.38 | |
| No parties banned | 79 | +0.54 |
Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.364 after dropping 6 countries.
Two series, one country
Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.
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Over time, within countries
Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 0years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.
Not enough history inside each country to look at this over time. That needs countries measured for several years in a row, and at least one of these measures is measured too rarely.
The data
% of respondents | ratio to the US (US = 1) | Years | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Denmark DNK | 73.9% | 1.05 | 2022, 2023 |
| Norway NOR | 72.1% | 0.971 | 2022, 2023 |
| Finland FIN | 68.4% | 0.968 | 2022, 2023 |
| China CHN | 63.5% | 0.526 | 2022, 2023 |
| Sweden SWE | 62.8% | 0.874 | 2022, 2023 |
| Iceland ISL | 62.3% | 1.22 | 2022, 2023 |
| Switzerland CHE | 58.5% | 1.32 | 2022, 2023 |
| Netherlands NLD | 57% | 0.888 | 2022, 2023 |
| New Zealand NZL | 56.6% | 0.957 | 2022, 2023 |
| Austria AUT | 49.8% | 0.87 | 2022, 2023 |
| Australia AUS | 48.5% | 1.01 | 2022, 2023 |
| Canada CAN | 46.7% | 0.924 | 2022, 2023 |
| United Kingdom GBR | 43.3% | 0.948 | 2022, 2023 |
| Germany DEU | 41.6% | 0.839 | 2022, 2023 |
| Macao SAR, China MAC | 41.4% | 0.668 | 2022, 2023 |
Haerpfer, C. et al., World Values Survey; EVS, European Values Study
Feenstra, Robert C., Robert Inklaar and Marcel P. Timmer (2015), "The Next Generation of the Penn World Table", American Economic Review, 105(10), 3150-3182, www.ggdc.net/pwt. Data: Penn World Table version 11.0, Groningen Growth and Development Centre, doi:10.34894/FABVLR.
Sources
Interpersonal trust
Share agreeing that most people can be trusted
World Values Survey Association and European Values Study · via Our World in Data · Free for non-commercial use with attribution · updated irregular (survey waves, roughly every 5 years)
The share who answer "most people can be trusted" rather than "you can't be too careful". Trust in other people is the classic measure of social ties (social capital). It is only loosely linked to national income. That makes it one of the few measures here where adjusting for GDP is a real test, not a foregone result. The survey runs in waves, not every year. So data for each country are sparse and uneven, and two readings for a country may be five or more years apart.
Price level
Price level of household consumption, compared with the US (Penn World Table)
Groningen Growth and Development Centre, University of Groningen · via DataverseNL · CC BY 4.0 · updated irregular (new versions every few years)
How expensive the things households buy are in a country, compared with the US in the same year, when money is changed at the market exchange rate. A value of 0.5 means a typical basket of goods and services costs about half what it would in the US. Richer countries tend to be more expensive. It comes from the same price comparisons used to adjust GDP for what money buys, so it shares a building block with GDP per capita (PPP). Years in which the Penn World Table flags the price comparison as unreliable are left out. No "better" direction is set.
How this was computed
Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2010–2023. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 18,622 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated V-Dem v16; V-Party v2. How the country data works · explore Interpersonal trust and Price level
This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Interpersonal trust changes Price level, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.
More links with Interpersonal trust or Price level
- Frequent prayer vs Interpersonal trust before -0.75 → after adjusting -0.61
- Interpersonal trust vs Researchers before +0.75 → after adjusting +0.60
- Price level vs Researchers before +0.79 → after adjusting +0.59
- Control of corruption vs Interpersonal trust before +0.73 → after adjusting +0.55
- Corruption Perceptions Index vs Interpersonal trust before +0.70 → after adjusting +0.51
- Price level vs Unintended pregnancies ending in abortion before -0.27 → after adjusting -0.48
- Political corruption vs Price level before -0.70 → after adjusting -0.47
- Aid given vs Interpersonal trust before +0.61 → after adjusting +0.46