Private Contentment, Public Cynicism: The Structural Retreat from Political Trust in Aging Electorates

Analyzing a massive ESS cross-national survey dataset of European citizens (N = 40,905), we employ rigorous mixed-effects linear regression models. We introduce complex three-way interaction terms designed to precisely isolate the intersections of personal social participation, formal political activism, and subjective well-being simultaneously against both chronological age and total years of education.