Year: 2013
Type: report
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: This paper presents new evidence on the individual and community specific \ndeterminants of social trust using data from 96 villages in Bangladesh, a country with \nhigh levels of institutional corruption and poor governance. We find perceived \ninstitutional trust to be positively correlated with inter-personal trust. At the same \ntime, there is significant social distance amongst various faith groups in our data: \nHindus (religious minorities) trust Muslims and other non-Hindus more than Muslims \ntrust Hindus and other non-Muslims. We also find no evidence that Hindus are \ndistrustful of the wider society in general. The lack of trust towards Hindus (and \nother non-Muslims) is significantly correlated with Islamic school attendance \namongst Muslim respondents whilst religiosity appears to play no role. These findings \nare robust to control for a wide range of individual and community level correlates \nand do not proxy for between religion differences in institutional trust. Lastly, when \ncompared to religion, effects of institutional trust and local economic development \n(including presence of NGO activity) are modest.
Author: M. Niaz Asadullah
Language: English
Topic: Social Capital and Networks
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Leverhulme Trust
OpenAlex ID: W2910277370