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Early‐Life Circumstances Predict Measures of Trust among Adults: Evidence from Hunger Episodes in Post‐War Germany
Author(s) -
Kesternich Iris,
Smith James P.,
Winter Joachim K.,
Hörl Maximiliane
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the scandinavian journal of economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.725
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1467-9442
pISSN - 0347-0520
DOI - 10.1111/sjoe.12329
Subject(s) - german , construct (python library) , shock (circulatory) , demographic economics , sample (material) , psychology , population , caloric theory , world war ii , economics , demography , political science , geography , medicine , sociology , programming language , chemistry , archaeology , chromatography , computer science , law
Can a major shock in childhood permanently shape trust? We consider a hunger episode in Germany after World War II, and we construct a measure of hunger exposure from official data on caloric rations set monthly by the occupying forces, providing regional and temporal variations. We correlate hunger exposure with measures of trust using data from a nationally representative sample of the German population. We show that individuals exposed to low caloric rations in childhood have significantly lower levels of trust as adults. This finding highlights that early‐life experiences can have long‐term effects in domains other than health, where such effects are well documented.