I think we can safely say that about most of Europe and Asia too. Don't know about other parts of the world but I don't think there's any significant part where

I think we can safely say that about most of Europe and Asia too. Don't know about other parts of the world but I don't think there's any significant part where trust in institutions is significantly rising. For a lot of objective metrics the institutions are doing better than ever in history. Life expectancy, human rights, reduction of extreme poverty, etc. Sure you can find some higher peaks in the post WWII decades but the trend on a larger time scale is for improvement. So what's going on? I don't think there's an single and easy answer and I think anybody presenting one is misguided if not intentionally misleading. To me it looks like a cultural problem. What sort exactly I could not say. But I see some signs: individualism, skepticism about institutional missions, people having an ever harder time swallowing hierarchies, cynicism about taking part in society, an increasing sense of doom, pop culture is very anti establishment and other things like that. All of the above also form a sort of self fulfilling prophecy. If there's no trust in institutions the only people that are going to join them will tend to do so with cynical self interest in mind. Which damages the institutions image further and so on.