Trust and safety in a society reflects the extent to which people feel that their freedom of movement and their property are protected. A high level of personal trust and safety can promote openness and transparency in society, social interaction and cohesion.
People in general feel safe walking alone at night: over 70% of people in the Asia/Pacific region and OECD countries would agree (Figure 7.7). However, there is a gender gap as in all countries women are less likely to report feeling safe walking alone at night. The gender gap accounts for less than 5 percentage points in Armenia, the Philippines and Singapore, while Australian and New Zealand women are much less likely (by around 30 percentage points) than man to report they safe walking home at night. On average the difference is about 16 percentage points in OECD countries and 12 percentage points in the Asia/Pacific region.
Almost 95% of Singaporeans feel comfortable being on the street at night, and this is close to 90% in Hong Kong, China. By contrast, less than half of the population in Cambodia and Kyrgyzstan feel safe walking home at night. Trends in the safety sentiment differ across countries: over the 2006/08 to 2015/17 period the number of Kazakhs reporting they felt safe on the street at night increased by 17 percentage points, while the sense of safety declined most significantly among inhabitants of Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines (Figure 7.7, right scale).
The crime rate has increased in the Asia/Pacific region (Figure 7.8): on average the reported crime rates in countries for which data are available have increased by 17 percentage points since 2005. However, this masks considerable variation in country experiences; reported crime rates declined significantly in Japan and Singapore since 2005 whereas they increased most in Armenia, the Maldives and Mongolia.
Confidence in law enforcement is relatively high overall (Figure 7.9). Over 70% of the population in the Asia/Pacific region and OECD countries trust the police. This proportion is highest at over 85% of respondents in Bhutan, New Zealand and Singapore. Less than 60% of respondents in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia trust their police, but this is nowhere as low as in Pakistan where only half of the respondents have faith in the police.
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.
