placestats

Physicians vs. Trust in government

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 47 countries, Physicians and Trust in government rise and fall together at r = -0.13 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). It holds up almost unchanged when only countries with similar income (GDP per person) are compared (r = -0.36, q = 0.047, allowing for the many pairs tested). Caution: correlation moves sharply once outliers are trimmed.

Comparing countries across the middle half of trust in government, 34% to 50.8% of respondents, physicians is worse by 0.171 per 1,000 people at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.418 per 1,000 people.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.127p = 0.394 · 47 countries
After adjusting for national income-0.361p = 0.014 · likely range [-0.59, -0.08]
p, allowing for regions0.002standard error 0.063 · 6 regions
Check for luck (q)0.047across 12,497 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.

Physicians · per 1,000 peoplelink with income +0.85 · proxy
Trust in government · % of respondentslink with income +0.36 · moderate

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

Physicians · per 1,000 people →Trust in government · % of respondents →0.5246.5810.5%83.5%Argentina: 5.11 per 1,000 people, 33.5% of respondentsAustralia: 4.09 per 1,000 people, 49% of respondentsAustria: 5.51 per 1,000 people, 46% of respondentsBelgium: 3.57 per 1,000 people, 50.5% of respondentsBulgaria: 4.33 per 1,000 people, 10.5% of respondentsBrazil: 2.36 per 1,000 people, 45% of respondentsCanada: 2.82 per 1,000 people, 47.5% of respondentsSwitzerland: 4.48 per 1,000 people, 82.5% of respondentsChile: 3.33 per 1,000 people, 34.5% of respondentsColombia: 2.54 per 1,000 people, 29.5% of respondentsCosta Rica: 2.69 per 1,000 people, 49.5% of respondentsCzechia: 4.35 per 1,000 people, 37% of respondentsGermany: 4.53 per 1,000 people, 52% of respondentsDenmark: 4.5 per 1,000 people, 54.5% of respondentsSpain: 4.29 per 1,000 people, 40.5% of respondentsEstonia: 3.47 per 1,000 people, 46% of respondentsFinland: 3.61 per 1,000 people, 70.5% of respondentsFrance: 3.28 per 1,000 people, 41.5% of respondentsUnited Kingdom: 3.3 per 1,000 people, 34.5% of respondentsGreece: 6.58 per 1,000 people, 29.5% of respondentsCroatia: 3.91 per 1,000 people, 46.5% of respondentsHungary: 3.46 per 1,000 people, 33.5% of respondentsIndonesia: 0.524 per 1,000 people, 83.5% of respondentsIreland: 3.88 per 1,000 people, 61% of respondentsIceland: 4.37 per 1,000 people, 42.5% of respondentsIsrael: 3.8 per 1,000 people, 42% of respondentsItaly: 4.19 per 1,000 people, 40% of respondentsJapan: 2.65 per 1,000 people, 33% of respondentsKorea, Rep.: 2.61 per 1,000 people, 29.5% of respondentsLithuania: 4.47 per 1,000 people, 42.5% of respondentsLuxembourg: 2.98 per 1,000 people, 82% of respondentsLatvia: 3.4 per 1,000 people, 31% of respondentsMexico: 2.59 per 1,000 people, 59.5% of respondentsNetherlands: 3.88 per 1,000 people, 51% of respondentsNorway: 4.97 per 1,000 people, 58% of respondentsNew Zealand: 3.61 per 1,000 people, 50.5% of respondentsPeru: 1.69 per 1,000 people, 13.5% of respondentsPoland: 4.03 per 1,000 people, 43% of respondentsPortugal: 5.85 per 1,000 people, 43% of respondentsRomania: 3.63 per 1,000 people, 25.5% of respondentsSlovak Republic: 3.7 per 1,000 people, 32% of respondentsSlovenia: 3.37 per 1,000 people, 41% of respondentsSweden: 4.41 per 1,000 people, 52% of respondentsThailand: 0.541 per 1,000 people, 55% of respondentsTurkiye: 2.24 per 1,000 people, 40% of respondentsUnited States: 3.68 per 1,000 people, 28% of respondentsSouth Africa: 0.794 per 1,000 people, 47.5% of respondentsARGBGRCHECOLGRCIDNLUXNORPERTHAZAF

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted-0.1270.39447
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted+0.0380.79947
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income-0.3610.01447
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income-0.1690.26147

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 47 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: -0.234 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.406 (without KOR) to -0.283 (without IDN). 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: IDN (+0.078).

Fragile: this link may not hold up.
  • correlation moves sharply once outliers are trimmed
  • much weaker within regions than across them (largely a between-region difference)

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.

nr
Europe & Central Asia30-0.12

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.

nr
Poorest third16-0.38
Middle third15+0.25
Richest third16+0.08

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.

nr
Christians38-0.30

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 = -0.081 after dropping 5 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 16years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = -0.036, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose physicians moved did not tend to see their trust in government move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)-0.361for comparison
Within countries+0.091each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere-0.036q = 0.891 · 39 countries
Year-on-year changes—q = —

227 country-years (one country in one year), 39 countries, 2007–2022, about 6 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 25% for Physicians, 10% for Trust in government. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

0.20−0.200+10years Trust in government trails Physicians →lag +0: r = -0.036 (n = 227)lag +1: r = -0.074 (n = 261)lag +2: r = -0.143 (n = 262)lag +3: r = -0.135 (n = 280)lag +4: r = -0.190 (n = 272)lag +5: r = -0.132 (n = 270)lag +6: r = -0.168 (n = 282)lag +7: r = -0.176 (n = 266)lag +8: r = -0.023 (n = 265)lag +9: r = -0.141 (n = 279)lag +10: r = -0.081 (n = 258)

Same year (lag 0): -0.036. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

The largest value on this curve (-0.19 at lag +4) is higher than the same-year one by 0.15. That gap is not a finding. It is the largest of 11 closely related estimates, and picking the biggest of many tests always makes it look bigger. That is exactly why nothing on this site is ranked or chosen by lag.

The data


per 1,000 people
% of respondents		Years
Greece GRC6.5829.5%2022, 2024
Portugal PRT5.8543%2022, 2024
Austria AUT5.5146%2023, 2024
Argentina ARG5.1133.5%2023, 2024
Norway NOR4.9758%2023, 2024
Germany DEU4.5352%2022, 2024
Denmark DNK4.554.5%2021, 2024
Switzerland CHE4.4882.5%2022, 2024
Lithuania LTU4.4742.5%2022, 2024
Sweden SWE4.4152%2021, 2024
Iceland ISL4.3742.5%2023, 2024
Czechia CZE4.3537%2022, 2024
Bulgaria BGR4.3310.5%2022, 2024
Spain ESP4.2940.5%2022, 2024
Italy ITA4.1940%2022, 2024

World Bank, World Development Indicators
OECD databases as named on each indicator: PISA, Social Expenditure Database (SOCX), Income Distribution Database, Development Assistance Committee statistics, Family Database, Government at a Glance, Corporate Tax Statistics, employment and environment statistics

Sources

Physicians

Physicians (per 1,000 people)

World Health Organization · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

Reported irregularly, so the latest value in the time window used is from a different year for different countries. Hospital beds, already on the site, have no "better" direction, since more beds is not plainly better. More doctors is closer to plainly better, so a direction is set on that basis.

Trust in government

Share with confidence in the national government

Gallup World Poll, compiled in OECD How's Life? · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 (OECD terms and conditions) · updated annual, except the snapshots noted per indicator

Gallup asks whether people have confidence in their national government. The OECD pools three years of answers at a time, so the figures are for 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2024, not every year. The same survey supplies the Cantril ladder, but from a different question. The two are not built from each other, so their pair is a real finding, not shared numbers. It is, though, a finding about one survey.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2017–2024. 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 6 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Physicians and Trust in government

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Physicians changes Trust in government, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.

More links with Physicians or Trust in government