Retirement and Trust : the social potential among older Europeans

Sammanfattning: Trust is seen as an essential ingredient in a flourishing society. It is a well-researched subject within the political science discourse, but few have looked at how retirement affect trust. This thesis aims to examine the relation between retirement and trust using regression analysis. Two hypotheses are formulated in relation to previous research findings; that trust increases when a person retires, and that this positive effect is expected to be stronger for retirees that engage in civil society. This thesis finds little evidence that supports the first hypothesis. Instead, retirement is negatively associated with trust, and this stands true after controls for other variables (health, education, age, year of birth) and a robustness test. In relation to the second hypothesis, this thesis finds that civic participation is indeed positively related to trust among the retired, although this relationship is rather weak.