School segregation, inequality and trust in institutions: evidence from Santiago

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study looks at segregation across the high schools of Santiago, Chile, and the levels of trust students hold in key institutions. Confidence in government and private institutions, such as parliament, courts, government agencies, the Church, the media, banks and firms, is important to political and social stability and for maintaining social cohesion. The results from a survey of high school students are used to examine the links between segregation and levels of student trust in public and private institutions. Multi-level modelling is employed to derive estimates of student institutional trust and explore the within – and between-school components. The results show that there are significant levels of between-school variation in levels of trust in both public and private institutions. The between-school differences are largely explained by the effects of student socioeconomic status (SES), mean school SES, and type of school.