Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/283839 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2023/143
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
Individuals are at their most mental plasticity in their impressionable years (ages 18-25 years) forming long-term attitudes and behaviours essential to functioning in a society, such as trust. In this paper we ask how exposure to natural disasters within the impressionable years may affect the formation of trust by matching data from over 1,000 disaster occurrences with data from 88,670 individuals across 36 African nations. Exploiting the frequency of disaster exposure across the impressionable years, we show that disaster exposure has a negative and significant association with generalized trust. Additionally, we show that disasters experienced during the impressionable years have an impact on other dimensions of interpersonal and institutional trust. Our findings are robust to a battery of tests and add to the evidence base on the lasting impacts of natural disasters on individuals and societies.
Subjects: 
natural disasters
trust
impressionable years
Africa
JEL: 
Q54
D91
Z13
O55
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9267-451-9
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.