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Features for Senior Citizens
Senior Citizens Are Much More 'Trusting' Than
Younger Americans
May have come of age when social mores, events
provided for more social trust
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Social Trust
Index |
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% of
High or Moderate and Low levels of social trust by age group.
Pew Research Center data |
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March 1, 2007 - Senior citizens are more trusting
than younger people, says a new poll that, like most others, finds older
people at one end or the other in every comparison of age groups. Social
trust is a belief in the honesty, integrity and reliability of others -
a "faith in people." It's a simple enough concept to describe. But it's
never been easy to figure out who trusts, or why, according to this new
Pew Social Trends Survey.
"Americans and Social Trust: Who, Where and Why"
found the age group closest to seniors in trust were the middle-aged.
At What Age Do We Trust?
The relationship between age and trust follows a
clear pattern but serves up a Rubik's cube of potential explanations,
says the report.
"The finding from the Pew survey is in line with
similar surveys taken through the years: younger adults are less
trusting than are those who are middle aged or older. But why?
"It could be a life cycle effect - as people pile
up more experiences and have more interactions with others, they become
more trusting. Or it could be a generational effect - today's older
adults may have come of age at a time when social mores and historical
events provided a more fertile seed bed for social trust.
"The generational cohort theory was popularized in
the 1990s by political scientist Robert Putnam, who posited that people
born before 1930 are more trusting and civic-minded as a result of their
big coming-of-age experience (World War II), while successive
generations are less trusting as a result of theirs (take your pick:
Vietnam, Watergate, the coarsening of the popular culture, television,
suburbanization).
"When it was first advanced a decade ago, Putnam's
theory proved to be a lightning rod for both praise and criticism. In
recent years, analyses by other scholars have found that there is both a
life cycle and a cohort explanation for the way that social trust is
higher among the middle-aged and elderly in this country than among the
young."
 Other
findings
The survey also found whites are more trusting than
blacks or Hispanics. People with higher family incomes are more trusting
than those with lower family incomes. The married are more trusting than
the unmarried. The People who live in rural areas are more trusting than
those who live in cities.
By contrast, the survey also found that there are
some demographic and political traits that have little or no correlation
to levels of social trust. Men and women; Republicans and Democrats;
liberals and conservatives; Protestants and Catholics and the secular
all of these groups have roughly similar levels of trust.
As for the population as a whole, Americans are
closely divided on the following question: "Generally speaking, would
you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful
in dealing with people?" Some 45% of respondents in the Pew survey say
the former, while 50% say the latter.
These responses have fluctuated very little during
the four decades that survey research organizations have been asking
this question, save for a period in the 1990s when measured levels of
interpersonal trust dipped for a number of years, triggering a flurry of
speculation and scholarship about the reasons for the decline. But since
then, social trust has rebounded to roughly the same level it had been
before the trough.2
The new Pew survey did not probe into the psyches,
values or the life experiences of respondents, so it can offer no clues
about how these factors might affect a given individual's inclination to
trust other people. Rather, it provides a look at how different
demographic groups responded to a battery of three questions about
social trust:
● Generally speaking, would you say that most
people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in dealing with
people? Some 45% of respondents said most people can be trusted.
● Do you think most people would try to take
advantage of you if they got the chance, or would they try to be fair?
Some 59% of respondents said most people try to be fair.
● Would you say that most of the time people try
to be helpful, or that they are mostly just looking out for themselves?
Some 57% of respondents said most people try to be helpful.
"When we combined the answers into an index of
social trust, we were able to place respondents into one of three
categories: those with high (35%), moderate (22%) and low (38%) levels
of social trust," say the authors.
Other Groups that Have a Distinctive Take on
Trust
In addition to the demographic groups highlighted
at the start of this report, there are other segments of the population
in which significant differences emerge on the question of trust. Among
them:
Education: Some 50% of college graduates
have high levels of social trust, compared with 28% of those with a high
school education or less.
Social/economic class: Some 50% of those who
describe their household as professional or business class have high
levels of social trust, compared with 30% of those who describe
themselves as working class and 18% among those who describe themselves
as the struggling class.
Military experience: Some 46% of men with
military experience (either as veterans or currently in the armed
services) have high levels of social trust, compared with 35% among men
who have never served in the military.
Voting history: People who voted in the last
presidential election are nearly twice as likely as people who didn't
vote (40% compared with 23%) to have a high level of social trust.
Gender: Men are more inclined than women to
have a high level of social trust, but the variance is fairly small -
38% for men, compared with 32% for women.
Regions: Southerners tend to be a bit less
trusting than residents of the West, Midwest or Northeast - a difference
partly explained by the higher percentage of blacks who live in the
South.
Politics: Republicans (42%) are more likely
than Democrats (34%) to have a high level of social trust, but these
partisan differences are not statistically significant once income is
controlled. And there are virtually no differences in social trust by
ideology - with conservatives, liberals and moderates all at very
similar levels.
Religion: There's virtually no difference
between Protestants and Catholics in levels of social trust. Nor are
there any differences among Protestants and Catholics and people who
have no religious preference.
About the Pew Social Trends Reports
The Pew social trends reports explore the behaviors
and attitudes of Americans in key realms of their lives - family,
community, health, finance, work and leisure. Reports analyze changes
over time in social behaviors and probe for differences and similarities
between key subgroups in the population.
The surveys are conducted by the Pew Research
Center, a nonpartisan "fact tank" that provides information on the
issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world.
>>
Read the complete report, click here
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