A cohesive society is one where citizens have confidence in national (and sub-national) level institutions and believe that social and economic institutions are not subjected to corruption. Confidence and corruption issues are dimensions that are strongly related to societal trust.
Confidence in the national government is higher in the Asia/Pacific region than among OECD countries (Figure 7.4), and Australians, Japanese, Koreans and New Zealanders have less confidence in their national governments than their Asian/Pacific peers. Confidence in national government seems lowest in Korea, Mongolia and Armenia. In about half of the countries about 70% of the population has confidence in its national government, and this is over 90% of the population in Singapore. On average, confidence in national government is pretty similar for the youth and total population, but young people in Hong Kong, China have far less confidence in their government than older Hong Kong residents.
On average across the Asia/Pacific region, confidence in national government has changed little over the last decade, but there is a large variation in trends across countries (Figure 7.4, right scale). Trust in government declined by about 20 percentage points in Armenia and Hong Kong, China. By contrast, trust in the national government increased among the population of Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.
Patterns in trust of financial institutions vary across countries (Figure 7.5). Since 2006/08, trust in financial institutions declined with the unfolding of the financial crisis in most OECD countries, but not in Japan. In most countries in the Asia/Pacific region trust in financial institutions increased, especially in Indonesia and Cambodia.
In richer countries people tend to perceive relatively low levels of corruption in government (Figure 7.6). Communities in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong (China) and especially Singapore are perceived to have the lowest levels of corruption, whereas over 80% of people in Kyrgyz Rep. and Indonesia think corruption in government is widespread.
or 3%; with a sample size of 4 000, this is 1.5%. To minimise the effect of annual fluctuations in responses related to small sample sizes, results are averaged over a three-year period, or two-year period in case of missing data. If only one observation in a three-year period is available this finding is not reported.
