216 Int. J. Happiness and Development, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2015 Copyright © 2015 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Trust, family, and education Maurizio Pugno Department of Economics and Law, University of Cassino, Campus Folcara, 03043 Cassino, Italy Email: m.pugno@unicas.it Abstract: The capacity to enhance people’s general trust, which is proved to be important for economic growth and individual well-being, is usually attributed to the family and education. This paper first draws attention to two awkward facts: that placing a great deal of importance on family ties has detrimental effects on general trust (although it brings well-being); and that education tends to be designed to enhance competition rather than cooperation. The paper then proposes people’s ‘social skill’ as the target variable for research and policy, since it is both proximate to general trust and can be learned as an enjoyable experience, especially, but not only, in the first part of people’s lives. The family and education should be thus orientated according to this new specific perspective. Keywords: general trust; family; education; social skill; well-being. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Pugno, M. (2015) ‘Trust, family, and education’, Int. J. Happiness and Development, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp.216–230. Biographical notes: Maurizio Pugno is a Full Professor of Economics at the University of Cassino, Campus Folcara, Cassino, Italy. Previously, he served at the University of Trento, Italy, and at the International PhD School of S. Anna, Pisa. He published theoretical, empirical, and historical articles and books on economic growth, structural change, entrepreneurship, human and social capital, job satisfaction and well-being. He is writing a book On the Foundations of Happiness in Economics: Reinterpreting Scitovsky (Routledge), in which a new approach to happiness economics is proposed. 1 Introduction People’s general trust is expected to contribute both to economic growth and to individual well-being because it facilitates economic action and social interaction. A great deal of empirical work has been done to measure general trust and to support this expected finding, and comforting results have been obtained. The origin of general trust thus becomes interesting; and the family and education, in particular, become the natural focus of research. However, the family does not seem to be always a good producer of general trust, and formal education, though performing better, seems inefficient, and in some cases even counterproductive. The underlying reason is that both the family and the educational system are usually designed to pursue aims other than forming people’s general trust. This paper indicates another line of inquiry to find a more secure origin of