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Trust and all-cause mortality: a multilevel study of US General Social Survey data (1978–2010)
BACKGROUND: Within public health research, generalised trust has been considered an independent predictor of morbidity and mortality for over two decades. However, there are no population-based studies that have scrutinised both contextual-level and individual-level effects of generalised trust on a...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BMJ Publishing Group
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6839792/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30322881 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech-2018-211250 |
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author | Giordano, Giuseppe Nicola Mewes, Jan Miething, Alexander |
author_facet | Giordano, Giuseppe Nicola Mewes, Jan Miething, Alexander |
author_sort | Giordano, Giuseppe Nicola |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Within public health research, generalised trust has been considered an independent predictor of morbidity and mortality for over two decades. However, there are no population-based studies that have scrutinised both contextual-level and individual-level effects of generalised trust on all-cause mortality. We, therefore, aim to investigate such associations by using pooled nationally representative US General Social Survey (GSS) data linked to the National Death Register (NDI). METHODS: The combined GSS–NDI data from the USA have 90 contextual units. Our sample consisted of 25 270 respondents from 1972 to 2010, with 6424 recorded deaths by 2014. We used multilevel parametric Weibull survival models reporting HRs and 95% CI (credible intervals for Bayesian analysis). Individual-level and contextual-level generalised trust were the exposures of interest; covariates included age, race, gender, marital status, education and household income. RESULTS: We found a robust, significant impact of individual-level and contextual-level trust on mortality (HR=0.92, 95% CI 0.88 to 0.97; and HR=0.96, 95% CI 0.93 to 0.98, respectively). There were no discernible gender differences. Neither did we observe any significant cross-level interactions. CONCLUSION: High levels of individual and contextual generalised trust protect against mortality, even after considering numerous individual and aggregated socioeconomic conditions. Its robustness at both levels hints at the importance of psychosocial mechanisms, as well as a trustworthy environment. Declining trust levels across the USA should be of concern; decision makers should consider direct and indirect effects of policy on trust with the view to halting this decline. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6839792 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | BMJ Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-68397922019-11-12 Trust and all-cause mortality: a multilevel study of US General Social Survey data (1978–2010) Giordano, Giuseppe Nicola Mewes, Jan Miething, Alexander J Epidemiol Community Health Research Report BACKGROUND: Within public health research, generalised trust has been considered an independent predictor of morbidity and mortality for over two decades. However, there are no population-based studies that have scrutinised both contextual-level and individual-level effects of generalised trust on all-cause mortality. We, therefore, aim to investigate such associations by using pooled nationally representative US General Social Survey (GSS) data linked to the National Death Register (NDI). METHODS: The combined GSS–NDI data from the USA have 90 contextual units. Our sample consisted of 25 270 respondents from 1972 to 2010, with 6424 recorded deaths by 2014. We used multilevel parametric Weibull survival models reporting HRs and 95% CI (credible intervals for Bayesian analysis). Individual-level and contextual-level generalised trust were the exposures of interest; covariates included age, race, gender, marital status, education and household income. RESULTS: We found a robust, significant impact of individual-level and contextual-level trust on mortality (HR=0.92, 95% CI 0.88 to 0.97; and HR=0.96, 95% CI 0.93 to 0.98, respectively). There were no discernible gender differences. Neither did we observe any significant cross-level interactions. CONCLUSION: High levels of individual and contextual generalised trust protect against mortality, even after considering numerous individual and aggregated socioeconomic conditions. Its robustness at both levels hints at the importance of psychosocial mechanisms, as well as a trustworthy environment. Declining trust levels across the USA should be of concern; decision makers should consider direct and indirect effects of policy on trust with the view to halting this decline. BMJ Publishing Group 2019-01 2018-10-15 /pmc/articles/PMC6839792/ /pubmed/30322881 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech-2018-211250 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Research Report Giordano, Giuseppe Nicola Mewes, Jan Miething, Alexander Trust and all-cause mortality: a multilevel study of US General Social Survey data (1978–2010) |
title | Trust and all-cause mortality: a multilevel study of US General Social Survey data (1978–2010) |
title_full | Trust and all-cause mortality: a multilevel study of US General Social Survey data (1978–2010) |
title_fullStr | Trust and all-cause mortality: a multilevel study of US General Social Survey data (1978–2010) |
title_full_unstemmed | Trust and all-cause mortality: a multilevel study of US General Social Survey data (1978–2010) |
title_short | Trust and all-cause mortality: a multilevel study of US General Social Survey data (1978–2010) |
title_sort | trust and all-cause mortality: a multilevel study of us general social survey data (1978–2010) |
topic | Research Report |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6839792/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30322881 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech-2018-211250 |
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