While the relation between inequality and levels of political trust has been intensely investigated, there is no consensus yet on the mechanism behind this relation. In this paper, we use multilevel models to analyse the diverging impact of economic inequality on political trust for different social groups within European countries. We observe that changes in inequality are associated with lower levels of political trust across all social strata, as operationalised through income level, education and employment status. In more unequal societies, differences in political trust between social strata are also smaller. In equal countries, on the other hand, well-off citizens are clearly more trusting than their less well-off counterparts. Altogether, the study contributes to discussions about the determinants of political support and how citizens are connected to their political system in an era of rising inequality, by suggesting the presence of a social justice frame. The analyses are based on the European Social Survey (2002–2016).

中文翻译：

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不平等对欧洲社会经济分层与政治信任之间关系的影响

尽管对不平等与政治信任程度之间的关系进行了深入研究，但对于这种关系背后的机制尚未达成共识。在本文中，我们使用多层次模型来分析经济不平等对欧洲国家内不同社会群体的政治信任的不同影响。我们观察到，通过收入水平，教育和就业状况实现的不平等变化与所有社会阶层中较低的政治信任度相关。在更加不平等的社会中，各阶层之间的政治信任差异也较小。另一方面，在平等的国家，富裕的公民显然比富裕的公民更信任。共，这项研究通过提出社会正义框架的存在，有助于讨论有关政治支持的决定因素以及在不平等加剧的时代公民如何与其政治体系联系。分析基于欧洲社会调查（2002–2016）。