A social price to the rising cost of living? The bidirectional relationship between inflation and trust.

This study examines whether social trust, the general belief that most people are honest and trustworthy, shapes perceptions of personal increases in cost of living and whether perceptions of increases in cost of living affect social trust. We analyze panel data from the Canadian Quality of Work and Economic Life Study (N = 2353) that was gathered between the fall of 2021 and spring of 2022, when inflation rose precipitously in Canada. Using a combination of entropy balancing and logistic regression, we estimate a statistically significant but weak causal effect of social trust on the perception of an increase in cost of living. The estimated causal effect of subjective inflation on declining trust is substantially larger. Additionally, financial strain does not moderate either estimated causal effect. In conclusion, rising inflation appears to not only threaten economic security-inflation also appears to harm the social fabric by depleting social trust.

Cette étude examine si la confiance sociale, c'est­à­dire la conviction générale que la plupart des gens sont honnêtes et dignes de confiance, influence les perceptions des augmentations personnelles du coût de la vie et si les perceptions des augmentations du coût de la vie affectent la confiance sociale. Nous analysons les données de panel du Canadian Quality of Work and Economic Life Study (N = 2 353) recueillies entre l'automne 2021 et le printemps 2022, lorsque l'inflation a augmenté de façon précipitée au Canada. En utilisant une combinaison de l'équilibrage de l'entropie et de la régression logistique, nous estimons un effet causal statistiquement significatif mais faible de la confiance sociale sur la perception d'une augmentation du coût de la vie. En utilisant une combinaison de l'équilibrage de l'entropie et de la régression logistique, nous estimons un effet causal statistiquement significatif mais faible de la confiance sociale sur la perception d'une augmentation du coût de la vie. L'effet causal estimé de l'inflation subjective sur la baisse de la confiance est nettement plus important. En outre, les tensions financières ne modèrent aucun des deux effets causaux estimés. En conclusion, la hausse de l'inflation ne semble pas seulement menacer la sécurité économique­l'inflation semble également nuire au tissu social en réduisant la confiance sociale.

The Trump Effect? Right-Wing Populism and Distrust in Voting by Mail in Canada.

Do Donald Trump's attacks on voting by mail influence how some Canadians view mail-in ballots? The Trump effect on views and behaviors surrounding voting by mail has been well documented in the United States. North of the border, more Canadians than ever voted by mail in the last general election. In this study, we consider how right-wing populism is associated with trust in voting by mail among Canadians. Specifically, we seek to test two main hypotheses. First, we consider whether Canadians holding populist views-and, in particular, those holding right-wing populist views (would-be Trump supporters)-are less trusting of voting by mail. Second, we consider whether political media exposure amplifies this association. We analyze data from both the 2021 Canadian Election Study and Democracy Checkup Survey. We find that those who hold populist views clearly have less trust in voting by mail. This is especially true among right-leaning individuals. Furthermore, as in the United States, this effect is moderated by one's level of political media exposure, with higher levels of political media exposure amplifying the effect of populist views on trust in voting by mail. Our findings, therefore, suggest that the politicization of mail-in voting by President Trump has important implications for the legitimacy of the electoral system not only in the United States, but also in Canada and potentially in other parts of the world.

Inflation hardship, gender, and mental health.

Inflation hit a 40 year high in the United States in 2022, yet the impact of inflation related hardships on distress is poorly understood, particularly the impact on women, whose income is already more limited. Using data from the US Household Pulse Survey (September-November 2022), we test whether exposure to inflation hardships is associated with greater distress and whether this association is moderated by gender (n = 119,531). We draw on a list of eighteen inflation related hardships (e.g., purchasing less food, working additional jobs, delaying medical treatment) to construct an ordinal measure of exposure to inflation hardship ranging from "no inflation hardship" to "five or more inflation hardships." We observe that an increasing number of inflation hardships is associated with higher levels of distress. We find no evidence of gender differences in the magnitude of that association at lower levels of inflation hardship (four inflation hardships or less). However, our findings suggest that exposure to five or more inflation hardships is more strongly associated with distress among men compared to women. The current study provides new insights into the cumulative burden of inflation hardships on mental health and the role that gender plays in this association.

Public awareness of One Health in China.

One Health is recognized as an increasingly important approach to global health. It has the potential to inform interventions and governance approaches to prevent future pandemics. Successfully implementing the One Health approach in policy will require active engagement from the public, which begs the question: how aware is the public of One Health? In this study, we examine the level and distribution of One Health awareness among the general public in China using a survey conducted in Beijing (n = 1820). We distinguish between awareness of the term of "One Health" versus awareness of the core set of ideas - the interconnection between the health of people, animals, and the environment. Our analysis shows that 40% of respondents reported that they have heard of the term, but more than double the number indicated that they recognize the core idea of interconnection between people, animals, and the environment. Specifically, about 83% of the respondents said that they believe people's health is closely connected to animal health and 86% believe people's health is closely connected to plant and environmental health. Multiple regression analysis indicates that women, younger people, and individuals with a higher level of education show higher levels of One Health awareness than their counterparts. Being aware of the term is associated with higher recognition of the core ideas. Policymakers and health practitioners should consider these findings when designing public awareness campaigns and educational initiatives to promote One Health principles.

Race, immigrant status, and inequality in physical activity: An intersectional and life course approach.

Physical activity improves health and well-being, but not everyone can be equally active. Previous research has suggested that racial minorities are less active than their white counterparts and immigrants are less active than their native-born counterparts. In this article, we adopt an intersectional and life course approach to consider how race and immigrant status may intersect to affect physical activity across the life span. This new approach also allows us to test the long-standing habitual versus structural debate in physical activity. Analysing data from two recent cycles of the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS, 2015-2016 & 2017-2018), we find that physical activity is only lower among immigrants who are also racial minorities and that the gap is most significant during adulthood, but rather insignificant during adolescence and late life. The findings that inequality in physical activity is more apparent among the most disadvantaged racialised immigrants and among working-age adults when structural influences are greater suggest that inequality in physical activity is rooted in structural inequalities, rather than habitual differences. Finally, we demonstrate that the widely observed 'healthy (racialised) immigrant effect' can be underestimated if inequality in physical activity is not considered.

L'activité physique améliore la santé et le bien-être, mais tout le monde ne peut pas être actif de la même manière. Des recherches antérieures ont suggéré que les minorités raciales sont moins actives que leurs homologues blancs et que les immigrants sont moins actifs que leurs homologues nés dans le pays. Dans cet article, nous adoptons une approche intersectionnelle et du parcours de vie pour examiner comment la race et la nativité peuvent s'entrecroiser pour affecter l'activité physique tout au long de la vie. Cette nouvelle approche nous permet également de tester le débat de longue date entre l'habitude et la structure de l'activité physique. En analysant les données de deux cycles récents de l'Enquête sur la santé dans les collectivités canadiennes (ESCC, 2015-2016 et 2017-2018), nous constatons que l'activité physique n'est plus faible que chez les immigrants qui sont aussi des minorités raciales et que l'écart est le plus important à l'âge adulte, mais plutôt insignifiant à l'adolescence et à la fin de la vie. Le fait que l'inégalité en matière d'activité physique soit plus manifeste chez les immigrants racialisés les plus défavorisés et chez les adultes en âge de travailler lorsque les influences structurelles sont plus importantes suggère que l'inégalité en matière d'activité physique est enracinée dans les inégalités structurelles, plutôt que dans les différences d'habitudes. Enfin, nous démontrons que l' "effet immigrant (racialisé) en bonne santé" largement observé peut être sous-estimé si l'inégalité en matière d'activité physique n'est pas prise en compte.

Assessment of Sociodemographics and Inflation-Related Stress in the US.

This survey study of US adults examines the association of stress experienced as a result of inflation with sociodemographic characteristics such as sex, race and ethnicity, education, and income levels.

The gender citation gap: Why and how it matters.

The weight of evidence suggests that articles written by men and women receive citations at comparable rates. This suggests that research quality or gender-based bias in research evaluation and citing behaviors may not be the reason why academic women accumulate fewer citations than men at the career level. In this article, I outline a career perspective that highlights women's disadvantages in career progression as the root causes for the gender citation gap. I also consider how the gender citation gap may perpetuate the unequal pay between genders in science. My analysis of two different datasets, one including paper and citation information for over 130,000 highly cited scholars during the 1996-2020 period and another including citation and salary information for nearly 2,000 Canadian scholars over the 2014-2019 period, shows several important findings. First, papers written by women on average receive more citations than those written by men. Second, the gender citation gap grows larger with time as men and women progress in their careers, but the opposite pattern holds when research productivity and collaborative networks are considered. Third, higher citations lead to higher pay, and gender differences in citations explain a significant share of the gender wage gap. Findings demonstrate the critical need for more attention toward gender differences in career progression when investigating the causes and solutions for gender disparities in science.

Il est prouvé que les articles écrits par des hommes et des femmes reçoivent des citations à des taux comparables. Cela suggère que la qualité de la recherche ou les préjugés sexistes dans l'évaluation de la recherche et les comportements de citation ne sont peut-être pas la raison pour laquelle les femmes universitaires accumulent moins de citations que les hommes au niveau global. Dans cet article, je présente une perspective de carrière qui met en évidence les désavantages des femmes dans la progression de leur carrière comme les causes profondes de l'écart de citation entre les sexes. J'examine également comment cet écart peut perpétuer l'inégalité des salaires entre les sexes dans le domaine scientifique. Mon analyse de deux ensembles de données différents, l'un comprenant des informations sur les articles et les citations de plus de 130 000 chercheurs très cités dans le monde et l'autre comprenant des informations sur les citations et les salaires de près de 2 000 chercheurs canadiens sur la période 2014-2019, montre plusieurs résultats importants. Premièrement, les articles écrits par des femmes reçoivent en moyenne plus de citations que ceux écrits par des hommes. Deuxièmement, l'écart de citations entre les sexes se creuse avec le temps, à mesure que les hommes et les femmes progressent dans leur carrière, mais la tendance inverse se vérifie lorsque la productivité de la recherche et les réseaux de collaboration sont pris en compte. Troisièmement, des citations plus nombreuses entraînent des salaires plus élevés et les différences de citations entre les sexes expliquent une part importante de l'écart salarial entre les sexes. Les résultats montrent qu'il est absolument nécessaire d'accorder plus d'attention à la progression de la carrière des hommes et des femmes lorsqu'on étudie les causes et les solutions des disparités entre les sexes dans le domaine scientifique.

Socioeconomic stratification and trajectories of social trust during COVID-19.

Extant theory suggests that crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic may change people's trust in others. A crisis-to-solidarity model suggests that people become more trusting, while a crisis-to-negative experience theory suggests that people lose trust, and a stability perspective predicts that social trust will largely remain unchanged. We argue that, when a crisis occurs, trust is likely to fall into distinct trajectories of change that will conform to these different perspectives, and placement into contrasting trajectories of change will be predicated on socioeconomic position. To test our argument, we use data from multiple waves of Canadian national surveys conducted from September 2019 to February 2021 and examine how two major forms of social trust-generalized trust and neighborhood trust-changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. A longitudinal latent class analysis (LLCA) shows increasing, decreasing, and stable trajectories of trust, which conform to each of the proposed patterns. We further show that individuals' baseline socioeconomic position is a strong indicator of the placement in these trajectories. Both forms of trust increased among individuals with higher socioeconomic positions while decreased among individuals with lower socioeconomic positions. This research contributes to the literature on the social context of trust by reconciling contrasting views of the consequences of crises for trust, and also in showing that the segmentation of changes in trust are proscribed by structures of social stratification.

Coethnic Concentration and Asians' Perceived Discrimination across U.S. Counties during COVID-19.

Aggregate figures unequivocally depict an increase in anti-Asian sentiment in the United States and other Western countries since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there is limited understanding of the contexts under which Asians encounter discrimination. The authors examine how coethnic concentration shapes Asians' experiences of discrimination across U.S. counties during COVID-19 and also assess whether county-level context (e.g., COVID-19 infection rates, unemployment rates) could help explain this relationship. The authors analyze the Understanding Coronavirus in America tracking survey, a nationally representative panel of American households, along with county-level contextual data. The authors find an n-shaped relationship between coethnic concentration and Asians' perceived discrimination. This relationship is explained largely by county-level COVID-19 infection rates. Together, the context of medium Asian concentration and high COVID-19 cases created a particularly hostile environment for Asians during COVID-19.

The gender peak effect: Women are most vulnerable to infections during COVID-19 peaks.

In this article, we describe a gender peak effect that women's relative share in COVID-19 infections increases when there is a sharp increase in cases, and it reaches the highest level during peak times in each wave of the COVID-19 outbreak. We demonstrate this gender peak effect by analyzing detailed, sex-disaggregated Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) data. The data include 1,045,998 men and women who were confirmed cases of COVID-19 from March 2020 to February 2022. We show that women's relative share in COVID-19 infections always increases and reaches the level exceeding men's share when we see a sharp peak in case number. We further show that women's higher share in care work (e.g., captured by occupation and age variables) largely explains their elevated infections during COVID-19 peaks. Effective public health interventions during infectious disease outbreaks must recognize this potential gender peak effect and take appropriate measures to curb women's health vulnerabilities.

Racial concentration and dynamics of COVID-19 vaccination in the United States.

This article considers how county-level concentrations of Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites are associated with COVID-19 vaccination differently. I argue that racially specific mechanisms-differential concentrations of social vulnerability and political ideology by race-are likely to create diverse associations between racial concentration and COVID-19 vaccination not only across racial groups but also within racial groups over time from early rollout to the time after COVID-19 vaccines became widely available. I test this argument by drawing on data from multiple sources that include county-level information on COVID-19 vaccination rates, racial population make-ups, and measures of political ideology and community vulnerability. Results show that the association between racial concentration and COVID-19 vaccination changes substantially across and within racial groups over time. Counties with higher percent of Asians and percent of Whites have higher vaccination rates at earlier time intervals whereas counties with higher percent of Latinos and percent of Blacks show lower vaccination rates. This trend flips at later dates for percent of Blacks, percent of Latinos, and percent of Whites. Results from multilevel regression models and mediation analysis controlling for vaccine hesitancy show that social vulnerability and political ideology are the underlying factors and their differential associations with diverse racial concentrations help create the racially specific and time-varying patterns.

Why is trust lower in Quebec? A cultural explanation.

In this article, we provide a cultural explanation of a long-standing trust puzzle in Canada-Quebecers trust much less than their fellow Canadians. Specifically, we develop a novel approach to empirically assess the historical influence of the Catholic Church, using the Quiet Revolution (a period of abrupt modernization in Quebec) as a natural experiment. We find that older cohorts socialized prior to the Quiet Revolution are significantly less trusting-a distinctive trend that is most pronounced among Catholics. Conversely, in the rest of Canada older cohorts are more trusting, following the trend commonly found in other countries. Furthermore, measures of both religious beliefs and modernization account for a large part of the birth cohort trust gap in Quebec. The findings suggest that low trust in Quebec is rooted in the province's Catholic cultural heritage, but that the legacy of the Quiet Revolution is gradually changing the trust culture.

Dans cet article, nous proposons une explication culturelle d'un casse-tête de longue date au Canada - les Québécois ont un niveau de confiance sociale plus bas que leurs concitoyens Canadiens. Plus précisément, nous développons une nouvelle approche pour évaluer empiriquement l'influence historique de l'Église catholique, en utilisant la Révolution tranquille (une période de modernisation abrupte au Québec) comme expérience naturelle. Nous constatons que les cohortes plus âgées et socialisées avant la Révolution tranquille font nettement moins confiance - une tendance distincte qui est plus prononcée chez les catholiques. Le contraire est constaté dans le reste du Canada : les cohortes plus âgées font davantage confiance, ce qui suit la tendance communément observée dans d'autres pays. De plus, les mesures des croyances religieuses et de la modernisation expliquent une grande partie de l'écart de confiance sociale entre les cohortes de naissance au Québec. Les résultats suggèrent que le faible niveau de confiance au Québec est enraciné dans l'héritage culturel catholique de la province, mais que le legs de la Révolution tranquille modifie progressivement la culture de confiance.

Correction: How social capital helps communities weather the COVID-19 pandemic.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0245135.].

Who Stays Physically Active during COVID-19? Inequality and Exercise Patterns in the United States.

Exercising is crucial to keeping up physical and mental health during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In this visualization, the authors consider how existing social inequalities may create unequal physical exercise patterns during COVID-19 in the United States. Analyzing data from a nationally representative Internet panel of the University of Southern California Center for Economic and Social Research Understanding Coronavirus in America project (March to December), the authors find that although all Americans have become physically more active since the outbreak, the pandemic has also exacerbated the inequality in physical exercise. Specifically, the authors show that the gaps in physical exercise have widened substantially between men and women, whites and nonwhites, the rich and the poor, and the educated and the less educated. Policy interventions addressing the widening inequality in physical activity can help minimize the disproportionate mental health impact of the pandemic on disadvantaged populations.

Experiences matter: A longitudinal study of individual-level sources of declining social trust in the United States.

The US has experienced a substantial decline in social trust in recent decades. Surprisingly few studies analyze whether individual-level explanations can account for this decrease. We use three-wave panel data from the General Social Survey (2006-2014) to study the effects of four possible individual-level sources of changes in social trust: job loss, social ties, income, and confidence in political institutions. Findings from fixed-effects linear regression models suggest that all but social ties matter. We then use 1973-2018 GSS data to predict trust based on observed values for unemployment, confidence in institutions, and satisfaction with income, versus an alternative counterfactual scenario in which the values of those three predictors are held constant at their mean levels in the early 1970s. Predicted values from these two scenarios differ substantially, suggesting that decreasing confidence in institutions and increasing unemployment scarring may explain about half of the observed decline in US social trust.

How social capital helps communities weather the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why have the effects of COVID-19 been so unevenly geographically distributed in the United States? This paper investigates the role of social capital as a mediating factor for the spread of the virus. Because social capital is associated with greater trust and relationships within a community, it could endow individuals with a greater concern for others, thereby leading to more hygienic practices and social distancing. Using data for over 2,700 US counties, we investigate how social capital explains the level and growth rate of infections. We find that moving a county from the 25th to the 75th percentile of the distribution of social capital would lead to a 18% and 5.7% decline in the cumulative number of infections and deaths, as well as suggestive evidence of a lower spread of the virus. Our results are robust to many demographic characteristics, controls, and alternative measures of social capital.

How does gun violence affect Americans' trust in each other?

This article examines how Americans' actual experience of gun victimization affects their trust in others and how this further connects to the widely-discussed association between gun crime and trust at the place level. Analyzing data from the U.S. General Social Survey (GSS), I find that, regardless when it occurred in life, Americans who were victimized by guns trust much less in others than those who had no such experience. In terms of the size of the effect, repeated gun victimization has the strongest effect, followed by adulthood victimization, and then childhood victimization. I also find that individuals who later achieve higher socioeconomic status are better able to recover from the psychological effect of childhood gun victimization, lending support for the experiential theory of trust that people can update their trust according to changing experiences later in life. Finally, combing the GSS data with data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), I also show that higher percentages of nonfatal and fatal gun violence victims lead to lower levels of trust both across and within the U.S. census divisions over time. Findings of this study demonstrate that America's gun violence affects not only just those killed, injured, or present during gunfire, but it can also sabotage the social and psychological well-being of all Americans.

The gender gap in commenting: Women are less likely than men to comment on (men's) published research.

Subtle gender dynamics in the publishing process involving collaboration, peer-review, readership, citation, and media coverage disadvantage women in academia. In this study we consider whether commenting on published work is also gendered. Using all the comments published over a 16-year period in PNAS (N = 869) and Science (N = 481), we find that there is a gender gap in the authorship of comment letters: women are less likely than men to comment on published academic research. This disparity is greater than gender differences in the publication of research articles. There is also a gendered pattern in commenting: women comment writers are relatively less likely to engage with men's research. If left unaddressed, these patterns in academic commenting could impede scholarly exchange between men and women and further marginalize women within the scientific community.

Immigration, Discrimination, and Trust: A Simply Complex Relationship.

Many immigrants experience discrimination. In this paper we consider how discrimination affects their trust. We make a theoretical case for a formal mediation approach to studying the immigration, discrimination, and trust relationship. This approach shifts attention to the basic fact that the overall levels of discrimination experienced by different immigrant and native-born groups are not the same. We also build on previous empirical research by considering multiple forms of discrimination, multiple types of trust and multiple immigrant/native-born groups. Drawing on the 2013 Canadian General Social Survey data (N = 27,695) we analyze differences in three kinds of trust (generalized trust, trust in specific others, and political trust), and the role of perceived discrimination (ethnic, racial, any), between five immigrant-native groups (Canadian-born whites, Canadian-born people of color, foreign-born whites, foreign-born people of color, and Indigenous people). We find that perceived discrimination is more relevant to general trust and trust in specific others than to political trust. We also find that perceived discrimination explains more of the trust gap between racialized immigrants and the native-born than the gap between non-racialized immigrants and the native-born. The results illustrate that what appears to be a simple relationship is far more complex when attempting to explain group differences.