"Did Attitudes About the U.S. Government Change Around 1970 and Persist?" April 2026.

Paper: pdf file Abstract
This paper focuses on four facts. 1) The ratio of the U.S. stock of infrastructure to GDP shows a large and close-to-monotonic decline beginning around 1970. 2) The U.S. government deficit as a percent of GDP changed around 1970 from being close to zero to being large and positive. 3) A measure of the level of trust in the U.S. government fell in the early 1970's and has remained low. 4) Voter turnout fell beginning in the early 1970's. The hypothesis proposed in this paper is that these facts can be explained by a change in attitudes about the U.S. government triggered in large part by the Vietnam War.