Scholars disagree on whether and to what extent adult life experiences can influence generalized trust and vice versa. Going beyond the methodological limitations of former studies, we aimed to answer the question as to what extent reciprocal causal relationships exist between generalized trust and the adult life experiences of financial success and (in)formal social contacts. We used two-wave cross-lagged panel models to identify those reciprocal causal relationships, and fixed-effects models to assess if they might be biased due to unaccounted time-invariant influences. Data from the Dutch NELLS panel study (age range 17–49) show that compelling empirical evidence is found for a reciprocal causal relationship between generalized trust and household income that does not suffer from bias due to unobserved heterogeneity. Furthermore, more trusting individuals experience a stronger decrease in material deprivation, but not vice versa. Trust and (in)formal social contacts are not causally related in any of our models.

学者们对成年人的生活经历是否会影响普遍信任产生影响，反之亦然。超越以往研究的方法学限制，我们旨在回答以下问题：广义信任与财务成功和（非正式）社会交往的成人生活经历之间存在何种因果关系。我们使用两波交叉滞后面板模型来识别那些相互因果关系，并使用固定效应模型来评估它们是否可能由于未解释的时不变影响而产生偏差。荷兰NELLS小组研究的数据（年龄17-49）表明，令人信服的经验证据表明，普遍信任与家庭收入之间存在互惠因果关系，并且不会因未观察到的异质性而遭受偏见。此外，信任度越高的人，物质匮乏的减少越明显，反之则不然。在我们的任何模型中，信任和（非正式）社交联系都没有因果关系。