Falling Behind, Losing Trust: Intergenerational Social Mobility and Generalized Trust in Europe

Extensive research has examined how generalized trust is distributed across social positions, but less attention has been paid to how it is affected by movements and opportunities within the system of social stratification. This paucity of research is striking, considering that economic insecurity and the slowdown of occupational upgrading increasingly confront people with social descent and stagnating prospects of upward mobility. This article examines the implications of individual mobility experiences and regional mobility patterns for generalized trust by applying diagonal reference models and a partial identification bounding approach to educational and occupational mobility trajectories across 28 European countries. Results show that downward mobility is associated with lower generalized trust. However, this relationship is contingent on the dimension of mobility and varies between Eastern and Western Europe. Moreover, people residing in regions with high upward mobility exhibit greater trust, highlighting the importance of structural opportunities and indirect experiences of social mobility.