Comparison of neighborhood trust between generations in a racially homogeneous society: A case study from Japan.

Using Japanese prefecture-level data for the years 1979 and 1996, I explore the extent to which inequality, age heterogeneity, and human capital have an effect upon neighborhood trust, which is ordinarily considered as a kind of particularized trust. The major findings are as follows: (1) Income inequality is associated with low trust for both young and the old generations. (2) Age homogeneity and education have a detrimental effect on trust. However, this tendency is not observed when the sample includes older-generation respondents only. These results are not changed when I instrument for inequality and per capita income using the relative size of the mature-aged cohort and the occurrence of natural disasters. It follows that neighborhood trust contains mixed features of generalized and particularized trust.