Interpersonal Trust as a Factor of Socio-Economic Development

Hereby the results of a study of the interrelation between different kinds of trust and objective indicators of socio-economic development of societies are presented. Aggregated results indicators of generalized and social trust of 57 countries of the world and the indicators of socio-economic development of various countries (GDP, indicator of life satisfaction, the index of quality of national business environment, the index of perceived corruption and so on) were used as empirical material. Interrelation of different types of trust with indicators of socio-economic development is quite high and statistically significant. However, when considering the dynamics of trust and GDP over a time span of about 20 years within a taken country (for example, Russia or the USA), the correlation of these indicators may not be found. We discuss the role of trust as a psychological factor of socio-economic development in the present paper.