Wu Cary, Bierman Alex, Schieman Scott
Department of Sociology, York University, Toronto, Canada.
Department of Sociology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada.
Can Rev Sociol. 2025 Aug;62(3):244-267. doi: 10.1111/cars.12481. Epub 2024 Aug 18.
This study examines whether social trust, the general belief that most people are honest and trustworthy, shapes perceptions of personal increases in cost of living and whether perceptions of increases in cost of living affect social trust. We analyze panel data from the Canadian Quality of Work and Economic Life Study (N = 2353) that was gathered between the fall of 2021 and spring of 2022, when inflation rose precipitously in Canada. Using a combination of entropy balancing and logistic regression, we estimate a statistically significant but weak causal effect of social trust on the perception of an increase in cost of living. The estimated causal effect of subjective inflation on declining trust is substantially larger. Additionally, financial strain does not moderate either estimated causal effect. In conclusion, rising inflation appears to not only threaten economic security-inflation also appears to harm the social fabric by depleting social trust.
本研究考察社会信任（即大多数人诚实且值得信赖的普遍信念）是否会塑造对个人生活成本增加的认知，以及生活成本增加的认知是否会影响社会信任。我们分析了来自加拿大工作质量与经济生活研究（样本量N = 2353）的面板数据，这些数据收集于2021年秋季至2022年春季期间，当时加拿大通货膨胀率急剧上升。通过结合熵平衡和逻辑回归，我们估计出社会信任对生活成本增加认知有统计上显著但微弱的因果效应。主观通货膨胀对信任下降的估计因果效应要大得多。此外，经济压力并未调节这两种估计的因果效应。总之，通货膨胀加剧似乎不仅威胁经济安全，通货膨胀还似乎通过消耗社会信任来损害社会结构。
