Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/147347 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 6093
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
Can a major shock in childhood permanently shape trust? We consider a hunger episode in Germany after WWII and construct a measure of hunger exposure from official data on caloric rations set monthly by the occupying forces providing regional and temporal variation. We correlate hunger exposure with measures of trust using data from a nationally representative sample of the German population. We show that individuals exposed to low caloric rations in childhood have significantly lower levels of trust as adults. This finding highlights that early-life experiences can have long-term effects in domains other than health, where such effects are well-documented.
Subjects: 
trust
endogenous preferences
hunger
war
JEL: 
D01
D74
J10
J62
N44
Z13
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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