McKenzie Wilkins

Declining Institutional Trust and Falling Well-Being: A U.S. Based Comparative Geographical Examination From 1970s-Present

McKenzie is a DPhil student supervised by Professor Danny Dorling. She holds a BA from Wellesley College (Magna Cum Laude, meaning, with great distinction), a MTS from Harvard University, and previously worked as a research assistant and program manager at Harvard Business School at the Leadership Initiative.

Her DPhil investigates changes over time (1970s-Present) in Americans’ trust in social, political, and economic institutions with a focus on confidence in the different branches of government, medicine, and science. Case studies are utilised to geographically explore how moments of crises shape institutional action and regional population reactions. She explores how these moments simultaneously intersect with measures of population well-being (primarily considering rising levels of economic inequality), falling levels of subjective well-being, and objective well-being outcomes.

To contextualise U.S. trajectories, her research situates American trends within a cross-national comparison with Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Canada. Finally, she will be integrating the results found into positive, forward-focused discussion that will speculate on institutional reform that would allow American institutions to better serve the public.