How Socioeconomic Position Shaped Trust During COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic didn't affect social trust the same way for everyone. Using eight waves of Canadian panel data, this study identifies three distinct trust trajectories — rising, stable, and falling — and shows that where people stood economically before the pandemic was the strongest predictor of which path they took.
What we studied
When a major crisis hits, what happens to social trust — the basic belief that most people can be relied upon? Decades of research on events from 9/11 to the 2008 financial crisis have produced contradictory answers. Some studies find crises build solidarity; others find they breed fear and suspicion; still others find trust largely unchanged. This study reframes the question entirely: rather than asking what happened to trust on average, it asks whether all three patterns could be simultaneously true — for different people.
The study draws on eight waves of C-QWELS (Canadian Quality of Work and Employment Life Study) panel data collected from September 2019 through February 2021, spanning the months just before COVID-19 through its first full year. The analytical sample includes 2,268 Canadian workers. Researchers measured two forms of trust — generalized trust (belief that most people can be relied upon) and neighborhood trust (belief that one's neighbors specifically can be). Rather than averaging everyone together, the researchers sorted people into distinct groups whose trust followed different paths over time.
Pre-pandemic economic position was measured three ways: household income, economic hardship (difficulty meeting basic needs), and how people ranked themselves in society. The central test was whether a person's economic standing before the crisis began predicted which trust trajectory they would follow during it. Two competing predictions were on the table: that crises unite people and build trust, or that they generate insecurity and erode it. The study found both were right — just for different groups.
What we found
Three distinct trajectories emerged for both forms of trust, and socioeconomic position was a strong, consistent predictor of which trajectory a person followed. The majority of Canadians — 58.4% for generalized trust, 69.2% for neighborhood trust — experienced rising trust during the pandemic, moving toward near-complete trust by early 2021. A stable middle group held steady. But roughly 12–18% of the sample saw trust collapse sharply and never recover: generalized trust among this group fell from 0.19 to just 0.04, and neighborhood trust dropped from 0.43 to 0.12.
Economic standing before the pandemic predicted which path a person followed with notable precision. Each step up in economic standing came with roughly 30% lower odds of falling into a declining trust path, and 31% to 50% higher odds of falling into a rising one. It was material conditions — income and economic hardship — that drove these effects, not simply how people felt about their social rank. When concrete economic measures and felt-status measures were considered together, the concrete economic ones dominated.
Neighborhood trust proved more volatile than generalized trust throughout. Even the "stable" trajectory for neighborhood trust showed gradual decline over time, suggesting that trust in nearby others — shaped by daily interactions disrupted by lockdowns and social distancing — was more sensitive to pandemic conditions than trust in people broadly. This contrast highlights that trust is not a single, uniform disposition: different forms of trust respond differently to crisis, and local, community-level trust may be the most fragile.
What this means
This study challenges the common assumption that crises affect everyone similarly. The pandemic didn't erode trust uniformly — it amplified a trust gap that already existed. Those who entered the pandemic with the least trust lost the most; those who entered with the most gained even more. That pattern has real consequences: social trust is tied to mental health, civic participation, cooperation with public health guidance, and community resilience. When trust collapses among the most economically vulnerable, the effects ripple well beyond any individual's disposition.
Target crisis support where trust — and resources — are most at risk
Crisis response programs that assume a uniform public reaction will miss those most harmed. Declining trust was concentrated among people with fewer economic resources, those already facing greater hardship and weaker support networks. Emergency interventions like income supports, debt relief, and housing stability do double duty: they address material hardship directly and help protect the social trust that lower-income communities depend on. Trust is not only a resource for recovery — it is one of the first things lost when economic insecurity takes hold.
Protect workers' economic stability to protect workplace and community trust
Economic hardship — not just perceived status — was the primary driver of trust decline during COVID-19. Employers who shielded workers from material insecurity during the pandemic (through retained wages, benefits continuity, and clear communication) likely helped sustain the social trust that underpins team cohesion and organizational resilience. In future disruptions, proactive measures to reduce workers' financial precarity are also investments in the social fabric of the workplace.
Look at who crises hurt most, not just the average
Analyses that track only average trust levels can falsely conclude a crisis had "no overall effect" when it actually boosted trust for some people and devastated it for others. Methods that sort people into distinct groups following different paths are essential for understanding how crises reshape social attitudes along lines of advantage and disadvantage. Future work should examine whether trust recovers as economic conditions stabilize, and extend findings beyond working-age Canadians to broader populations.