Economix Blog: Lean on Me: Trust and Friendship Around the World

Among the many reasons Americans are lucky is that they tend to have people they can depend on.

That is one of the takeaways from a recent report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which in part looked at social relationships and trust around the developed world. Here is a chart showing the share of a country’s population that say they have relatives or friends they can count on for help in times of need:

Note: Data refer to 2008 for Iceland and Norway; and to 2009 for Estonia, Israel, Switzerland and South Africa. Data from Gallup World Poll and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The United States is in the middle of the pack of the countries surveyed, with 92.3 percent of Americans saying they have a support network. Compare this to a country like India, where only 59.3 percent of people say they have a network they can depend on in times of need.

CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

Having friends and family you can lean on is particularly important for those who are more likely to need support from time to time — that is, lower-income people.

Unfortunately, the O.E.C.D. found that people with lower incomes and less education were least likely to have a personal social safety net:

Source: Gallup World Poll and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Perhaps partly because they generally have good support networks, Americans are slightly more trusting than residents of other countries; 36.6 percent of Americans agreed that “most people can be trusted,” compared with 33 percent across the developed world.

But distrust reigns when it comes to opinions of some of their most prominent institutions.

Just 30.1 percent of Americans have a “high level of trust” in the media, compared to an O.E.C.D. average of 40.4 percent. Even China, where news organizations are state-run, somehow managed to have higher trust in the media (54.6 percent). The same is true in Mexico (52 percent), where journalists reportedly self-censor to avoid angering the drug cartels.

Data refer to 2009 for Estonia, Israel, Switzerland and South Africa; and to 2008 for Iceland and Norway. Data regarding trust in the national government is not available for China. The value for the O.E.C.D. is an average of O.E.C.D. countries for which data are available in the latest wave of the survey. Source: Gallup World Poll and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Americans are also slightly less likely than other developed countries to say they have a high level of trust in their national government, yet somewhat more likely to trust in their own country’s judicial system.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=0695b3fbe9c0fcc614ff656bba3ae652