This paper measures trustworthiness using an experimental protocol
designed to distinguish this social norm from purely altruistic preferences.
Experimental participants were drawn from South African households surveyed
by a longitudinal living standards survey. This procedure not only
permits analysis of the impact of experimentally measured social norms
on real world outcomes, it also provides a rich array of data that can be
used to control for initial conditions and prior possibilities that might be
spuriously correlated with norms. Interestingly, altruism has more robust
e§ects on living standards than does trustworthiness. This Önding motivates
a deeper reconsideration on how trusts works, especially in societies
like South Africaís where the boundaries of trust are likely to be tightly
circumscribed by a history of social exclusion and segregation.