How Education Shapes Trust: Empirical Evidence from China

The general assumption in the mainstream social capital theory states a likely causal relationship between education and trust in people, while such a conclusion might be contextual. Using the CGSS data and employing a fuzzy regression-discontinuity design where the compulsory education law (1986) in China is taken as an exogenous instrument, I find a positive correlation between education and the level of generalized trust. Further, with respect to another measure of trustthe radius of trust, I find no evidence supportive to significant correlations between education and trust in different distant social groups. However, the second-stage results do not suggest any likely causal effect from education on generalized trust or trust in different relationships, which indicates the OLS results might suffer from omitted variable bias.