Radicalizing and Conservatizing: Ageing Effects on Political Trust in Asia, 2001–2016

Previous studies on political trust found ageing leads to support for authority, while education encourages a critical view of governments. We speculated the two effects would moderate each other and complicate the story. By applying Hierarchical age-period-cohort (HAPC) modelling to the Asian Barometer Survey (2001–2016) data, we found significant interaction effects of age and education in shaping political trust. During the transition from youth to middle age, ageing reinforces people’s original disposition formed in the early years. From middle to old age, ageing mainly plays a conservatizing role. Ageing also conditions the educational gap in political trust: people with little education’s political trust increases as they age; well-educated individuals’ political trust decline until middle age and conservatize later. In sum, ageing has a variant effect during the life course; we found evidence of ageing’s radicalizing and conservatizing effects on political trust in the context of Asia.