Trust Buffers Against Reduced Life Satisfaction When Faced With Financial Crisis

Background: In light of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and its large economic consequences, we used a three-layer nested structural model (individual, community, and country), each with a corresponding measure of income, trust, and satisfaction, to assess change in their interrelationships following a global crisis; which, in this study, is the 2008/2009 financial crisis. Methods: With multilevel techniques, we analyzed data from two waves (2006 and 2012) of the European Social Survey (ESS) in 19 countries (weighted N = 73,636) grouped according to their levels of trust. Results: In high trust countries, personal life satisfaction (LS) was not related to personal, community, or national income before or after the crisis. In contrast, in low trust countries, LS was strongly related to all three forms of income, especially after the crisis. In all country groups, personal, social, and political trust moderated their respective effects of income on LS (“the buffer hypothesis”). Political trust moderated the effects of income more strongly in low trust countries. The moderating effect of political trust increased sharply after the crisis. After the crisis, national-level factors (e.g., political trust, national income) increased their importance for LS more than the factors at the local and individual levels. However, the relative importance of all the three forms of income to LS increased after the crisis, to the detriment of trust. Conclusion: Economic crises seem to influence personal LS less in high trust countries compared with low trust countries. Hence, high trust at a national level appears to buffer the negative impact of a financial crisis on personal satisfaction. Overall, the factors at the national level increased their impact during the financial crisis. When facing a global crisis, the actions taken by institutions at the country level may, thus, become even more important than those taken before the crisis.