Inequality, Trust, and Sustainability

The paper examines the instrumental link between income inequality and social trust, which is considered essential for the collective action required for sustainability. Using a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) on World Values Survey data from 20 country-year combinations, the author finds that both absolute income and income inequality significantly influence social trust. Specifically, trust rises with income but falls as income inequality (measured by the Gini coefficient) increases. The analysis suggests that neither economic growth nor redistribution alone is sufficient to significantly raise trust levels in low-trust societies; instead, a combination of stable growth and narrowing income distributions over approximately two decades is required to produce meaningful changes in social cohesion.

• The study concludes that social trust is influenced by both absolute income levels and income inequality, rejecting the hypothesis that the negative relationship between trust and inequality is solely a result of income levels or composition effects.
• Statistical analysis shows that the Gini coefficient is significant at the 95 per cent level, and adding it to the model significantly increases explanatory power, higher log likelihood, and a lower Akaike information criterion (AIC) score.
• The author estimates that a 0.05 change in the Gini coefficient is associated with a 13 percent decline in the odds ratio for social trust, which corresponds to approximately a 3.3 percentage point decline in reported trust relative to even odds.
• Neither income growth nor redistribution alone is deemed substantively sufficient to move a country from a low-trust to a medium-trust position within a reasonable timeframe.
• The paper argues that a combined policy of stable economic growth and narrowing income distributions over a period of roughly two decades could lead to meaningful improvements in social trust.

APA

Kemp-Benedict, E. (2011). Inequality, Trust, and Sustainability. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-WorkingPaper-201101-KempBenedict-InequalityTrustAndSustainability.pdf

Chicago

Kemp-Benedict, Eric. Inequality, Trust, and Sustainability. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2011. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-WorkingPaper-201101-KempBenedict-InequalityTrustAndSustainability.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Kemp-Benedict |first1=Eric |title=Inequality, Trust, and Sustainability |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=September 2011 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-WorkingPaper-201101-KempBenedict-InequalityTrustAndSustainability.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{kempbenedict2011inequality, author = {Kemp-Benedict, Eric}, title = {{Inequality, Trust, and Sustainability}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2011}, month = sep, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-WorkingPaper-201101-KempBenedict-InequalityTrustAndSustainability.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }