The Effects of Democracy and Trust on Subjective Well-Being: A Multilevel Study of Latin American Countries

The aim of this chapter is to study the relationship between subjective well-being (SWB) and two institutional factors—trust and democracy—in Latin America. Previous literature has demonstrated a positive and significant effect of both factors on individuals’ SWB at the international level using World Value Survey (WVS) data. This positive correlation exists not only for individual perceptions of trust and democracy but also for the whole country. In the case of Latin American countries, however, Latin Barometer data shows low levels of satisfaction with democracy and trust, while the citizens refer one of the highest levels of SWB in the world. Our objective is to shed light on this Latin American dissociation between the everyday life of the inhabitants and the two-abovementioned institutional factors of the Latin American social environment.