Do Cultural Traits Affect Occupational Status? The Role of Trust and Individualism

Does trust affect the probability to be self-employed or being an entrepreneur more than individualism? Using an extensive level of individual-level data across countries over time, we find that once we control for individualism, the association of trust with the probability to be self-employed becomes insignificant. Additionally, based on marginal effect analysis, we find that trust does not significantly affect the probability of being self-employed when individualism is low or even at average levels. The positive and significant association between trust and entrepreneurship is only true for high levels of individualism. We find similar results in the context of choice to be full-time employment—the only difference is even for average levels of individualism, trust is significantly associated with the probability to be full-time employed.