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Trust in government

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Trust
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What you should know about this indicator

  • The original question asked was: “In this country, do you have confidence in each of the following, or not? ... How about national government?” The data shows the percentage of respondents answering “yes” (the other response categories being “no”, and “don’t know”).
  • The data comes from the annual Gallup World Poll, which samples around 1000 people per country each year. The sample is designed to be nationally representative of the population aged 15 and over (including rural areas).

How is this data described by its producer?

Trust in government is based on the survey question: “In this country, do you have confidence in each of the following, or not? ... How about national government?” The data shown reflect the percentage of respondents answering “yes” (the other response categories being “no”, and “don’t know”). Information is sourced via the annual Gallup World Poll, which samples around 1 000 people per country each year. The sample is ex ante designed to be nationally representative of the population aged 15 and over (including rural areas).

Trust in government
Percentage of respondents replying "yes" to the question "In this country, do you have confidence in national government, or not?"
Source
OECD (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
February 17, 2026
Next expected update
February 2027
Date range
2007–2024
Unit
%

What you should know about this indicator

  • The original question asked was: “In this country, do you have confidence in each of the following, or not? ... How about national government?” The data shows the percentage of respondents answering “yes” (the other response categories being “no”, and “don’t know”).
  • The data comes from the annual Gallup World Poll, which samples around 1000 people per country each year. The sample is designed to be nationally representative of the population aged 15 and over (including rural areas).

How is this data described by its producer?

Trust in government is based on the survey question: “In this country, do you have confidence in each of the following, or not? ... How about national government?” The data shown reflect the percentage of respondents answering “yes” (the other response categories being “no”, and “don’t know”). Information is sourced via the annual Gallup World Poll, which samples around 1 000 people per country each year. The sample is ex ante designed to be nationally representative of the population aged 15 and over (including rural areas).

Trust in government
Percentage of respondents replying "yes" to the question "In this country, do you have confidence in national government, or not?"
Source
OECD (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
February 17, 2026
Next expected update
February 2027
Date range
2007–2024
Unit
%

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

OECD – OECD How’s Life? Well-being Database

The How’s Life? database is the one-stop shop for the 80+ indicators of the OECD Well-being Dashboard, covering social, economic and environmental outcomes that matter most for people, the planet and future generations. It consists of six datasets: current well-being, current well-being vertical inequalities, current well-being by age, educational attainment, sex, and resources for future well-being. To learn more about the database, visit the database's definitions and metadata.

Retrieved on
February 17, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/trust-in-government.html
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
OECD (2026). Future well-being. OECD Data Explorer.

The How’s Life? database is the one-stop shop for the 80+ indicators of the OECD Well-being Dashboard, covering social, economic and environmental outcomes that matter most for people, the planet and future generations. It consists of six datasets: current well-being, current well-being vertical inequalities, current well-being by age, educational attainment, sex, and resources for future well-being. To learn more about the database, visit the database's definitions and metadata.

Retrieved on
February 17, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/trust-in-government.html
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
OECD (2026). Future well-being. OECD Data Explorer.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

As the data originally comes as 2- and 3-year pooled averages, we kept the latest year of each group as the year of the observation. For example, for the 2020-2022 average, we kept 2022 as the year of the observation.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Trust in government”, part of the following publication: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Max Roser, and Pablo Arriagada (2016) - “Trust”. Data adapted from OECD. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260217-112422/grapher/oecd-average-trust-in-governments.html [online resource] (archived on February 17, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

OECD (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

OECD (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Trust in government” [dataset]. OECD, “OECD How’s Life? Well-being Database” [original data]. Retrieved February 19, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260217-112422/grapher/oecd-average-trust-in-governments.html (archived on February 17, 2026).