placestats

Trust in government vs. Wellbeing score

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 45 countries, Trust in government and Wellbeing score rise and fall together at r = +0.45 (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 = 0.043, allowing for the many pairs tested). Caution: leave-one-out range spans 0.22 in r.

Comparing countries across the middle half of trust in government, 33.5% to 51% of respondents, wellbeing score is better by 0.34 typical gaps at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.198 typical gaps.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.449p = 0.002 · 45 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.358p = 0.017 · likely range [+0.07, +0.59]
p, allowing for regions0.004standard error 0.059 · 5 regions
Check for luck (q)0.043across 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.

Trust in government · % of respondentslink with income +0.36 · moderate
Wellbeing score · typical gaps (standard deviations)link with income +0.80 · high

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

Every country as a dot

Trust in government · % of respondents →Wellbeing score · typical gaps (standard deviations) →10.5%83.5%-0.5721.89Argentina: 33.5% of respondents, 0.216 typical gaps (standard deviations)Australia: 49% of respondents, 1.25 typical gaps (standard deviations)Austria: 46% of respondents, 1.26 typical gaps (standard deviations)Belgium: 50.5% of respondents, 0.818 typical gaps (standard deviations)Bulgaria: 10.5% of respondents, -0.572 typical gaps (standard deviations)Brazil: 45% of respondents, 0.123 typical gaps (standard deviations)Canada: 47.5% of respondents, 1.06 typical gaps (standard deviations)Switzerland: 82.5% of respondents, 1.55 typical gaps (standard deviations)Chile: 34.5% of respondents, 0.19 typical gaps (standard deviations)Colombia: 29.5% of respondents, -0.125 typical gaps (standard deviations)Czechia: 37% of respondents, 0.726 typical gaps (standard deviations)Germany: 52% of respondents, 0.981 typical gaps (standard deviations)Denmark: 54.5% of respondents, 1.89 typical gaps (standard deviations)Spain: 40.5% of respondents, 0.816 typical gaps (standard deviations)Estonia: 46% of respondents, 0.622 typical gaps (standard deviations)Finland: 70.5% of respondents, 1.87 typical gaps (standard deviations)France: 41.5% of respondents, 0.717 typical gaps (standard deviations)United Kingdom: 34.5% of respondents, 1.07 typical gaps (standard deviations)Greece: 29.5% of respondents, -0.284 typical gaps (standard deviations)Croatia: 46.5% of respondents, 0.0883 typical gaps (standard deviations)Hungary: 33.5% of respondents, 0.266 typical gaps (standard deviations)Indonesia: 83.5% of respondents, -0.192 typical gaps (standard deviations)Ireland: 61% of respondents, 0.894 typical gaps (standard deviations)Iceland: 42.5% of respondents, 1.78 typical gaps (standard deviations)Italy: 40% of respondents, 0.438 typical gaps (standard deviations)Japan: 33% of respondents, 0.552 typical gaps (standard deviations)Korea, Rep.: 29.5% of respondents, 0.475 typical gaps (standard deviations)Lithuania: 42.5% of respondents, 0.51 typical gaps (standard deviations)Luxembourg: 82% of respondents, 0.652 typical gaps (standard deviations)Latvia: 31% of respondents, 0.212 typical gaps (standard deviations)Mexico: 59.5% of respondents, 0.335 typical gaps (standard deviations)Netherlands: 51% of respondents, 1.54 typical gaps (standard deviations)Norway: 58% of respondents, 1.82 typical gaps (standard deviations)New Zealand: 50.5% of respondents, 1.46 typical gaps (standard deviations)Peru: 13.5% of respondents, -0.348 typical gaps (standard deviations)Poland: 43% of respondents, 0.505 typical gaps (standard deviations)Portugal: 43% of respondents, 0.195 typical gaps (standard deviations)Romania: 25.5% of respondents, 0.197 typical gaps (standard deviations)Slovak Republic: 32% of respondents, 0.318 typical gaps (standard deviations)Slovenia: 41% of respondents, 0.55 typical gaps (standard deviations)Sweden: 52% of respondents, 1.7 typical gaps (standard deviations)Thailand: 55% of respondents, 0.256 typical gaps (standard deviations)Turkiye: 40% of respondents, -0.508 typical gaps (standard deviations)United States: 28% of respondents, 0.943 typical gaps (standard deviations)South Africa: 47.5% of respondents, -0.515 typical gaps (standard deviations)BGRCHEFINGBRGRCIDNISLLUXNORPERUSAZAF

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted+0.4490.00245
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted+0.4940.00145
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income+0.3580.01745
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income+0.3320.02845

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 45 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: +0.091 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.285 (without BGR) to +0.506 (without LUX). 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: LUX (+0.148).

Fragile: this link may not hold up.
  • leave-one-out range spans 0.22 in r
  • correlation moves sharply once outliers are trimmed

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+0.23

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 third15+0.37
Middle third15+0.39
Richest third15+0.24

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
Christians37+0.37

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 = +0.553 after dropping 3 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
typical gaps (standard deviations)		Years
Indonesia IDN83.5%-0.1922024, 2022
Switzerland CHE82.5%1.552024, 2022
Luxembourg LUX82%0.6522024, 2010
Finland FIN70.5%1.872024, 2022
Ireland IRL61%0.8942024, 2010
Mexico MEX59.5%0.3352024, 2022
Norway NOR58%1.822024, 2022
Thailand THA55%0.2562024, 2022
Denmark DNK54.5%1.892024, 2022
Sweden SWE52%1.72024, 2022
Germany DEU52%0.9812024, 2022
Netherlands NLD51%1.542024, 2022
New Zealand NZL50.5%1.462024, 2022
Belgium BEL50.5%0.8182024, 2010
Australia AUS49%1.252024, 2022

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
ivs; whr

Sources

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.

Wellbeing score

Wellbeing score

PlaceStats · via PlaceStats · Derived work; each member keeps its own licence · updated recomputed with the panel

The average of 3 measures from 2 publishers. Each measure is first put on a common scale: 0 is the average country in an average year, and 1 is a typical gap between countries (a standard deviation). Each is turned so that higher is better. Measures are averaged within each publisher first, so a publisher with many measures does not count for more. Members: Self-reported happiness, Interpersonal trust, Life satisfaction.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2010–2024. 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 5 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 Trust in government and Wellbeing score

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

More links with Trust in government or Wellbeing score