Education and political trust

Educational attainment is positively associated with political trust in longstanding democracies, but the causal status of this relationship is unclear. We argue that this relationship is unlikely to be causal because it is confounded by the common family background of those who are more trusting and who select into higher education. We then triangulate this with three designs. Using data from four twin studies, we first show that variation in educational attainment among identical twin pairs does not predict political trust. We then demonstrate that the relationship between educational attainment and trust is attenuated when controlling for polygenic indices of educational attainment and cognitive ability. Finally, we show similar attenuation by matching respondents based on their early life conditions and cognitive ability, using cohort data from the United Kingdom. In sum, those predisposed to be trusting are also predisposed to select into further education, and therefore the association between education and trust is unlikely to be causal in nature.