Declining social trust reflects generational succession, not individual change

Evidence

Most, if not all, of the decline in American social trust since the 1960s is attributable to generational succession. Moreover, that generational decline has tended to accelerate in the last decade or two. In the 1970s roughly 80 percent of Americans born in the first third of the century believed that “most people are honest,” and in the late 1990s they continued to hold that optimistic view in almost undiminished degree. (See figure 39.) However, their share in the population had fallen from nearly one in every two adults in 1975 to barely one in every eight adults in 1998. … In short, at century’s end, a generation with a trust quotient of nearly 80 percent was being rapidly replaced by one with a trust quotient of barely half that. The inevitable result is steadily declining social trust, even though each individual cohort is almost as trusting as it ever was. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 463

Categorization

• SEED: A ‘trustable generation gap’ essay angle: each cohort is stable in its trust yet the aggregate keeps falling—an emergent property of slow demographic replacement.
• XREF: connects to: Trust declines can persist for a generation without preventing later social progress — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 802; Generational effects alter society even when individuals stay the same — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 858; Different civic activities declined through different generational and society-wide mechanisms — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 915 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Generational effects alter society even when individuals stay the same #corroborates (0.90) — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 858
• Trust declines can persist for a generation without preventing later social progress #exemplifies (0.85) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 802