Does Migration Affect Trust? Internal Migration and the Stability of Trust among Americans

Abstract

This article examines how the experience of moving from a high to a low-trust place might affect people’ trust and vice versa. Given that the American South has lower trust than other regions of the country, I consider whether Southerners would become more trusting when they move to non-South regions and whether non-Southerners would trust less when they move to the South. My analysis of the cross-sectional data from the General Social Survey (GSS, 1972–2018) suggests that, irrespective of where they move after age 16, Americans’ trust changes very little. The overall results lend significant support for the cultural socialization theory of trust. That is, people learn to trust early in life from cultural heritage and socialization and their learned trust does not respond to new experiences and changing circumstances.