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Recently there has been a spate of newspaper reports extolling Denmark as the world’s happiest country. Secular liberals often point to the Scandinavian countries as an earthly paradise, when compared with what they see as a broken-down, inegalitarian, hyper-religious United States. Are they right? I decided to check out the facts, and here’s what I’ve come up with.
My findings, in a nutshell
1. Latin Americans are actually the world’s happiest people; Danes are the world’s most contented people.
2. The success of Sweden and Denmark is due to its social homogeneity and its Protestant work ethic, rather than socialism.
3. Scandinavian societies are egalitarian, but they also tend to stifle individuality.
4. Denmark and Sweden have their own social problems.
5. Sweden also has a shocking record of violating individual liberties.
1. Latin Americans are actually the world’s happiest people; Danes are the world’s most contented people
How do you define happiness, anyway?
Most people would tend to define “happiness” as a feeling of enjoying your life, typically accompanied by behavior such as laughing or smiling a lot, engaging in fun activities, and sharing one’s positive experiences with one’s friends and family. If you define happiness in this way, then the happiest people in the world aren’t the Danes, but Latin Americans.
A 2015 Gallup report by Jon Clifton, titled, Who Are the Happiest People in the World? The Swiss or Latin Americans? (April 24, 2015), explains the difference between two widely used international metrics for happiness. One metric, used in the UN World Happiness Report, places the Danes (or in 2015, the Swiss) on top, while the other metric, used by Gallup in its Global Healthways Wellbeing Index, places Latin American countries on top:
The Swiss are the happiest people on the planet. That was the conclusion of the most recent UN World Happiness Report. Just weeks ago, however, Gallup released a report suggesting something very different — that the happiest people in the world are Latin Americans. Which one is right?
The answer is “both” — it just depends on how you define happiness. If you think happiness is how people see their lives — then the Swiss are the happiest people in the world. If you think happiness is defined by how people live their lives through experiences such as smiling and laughing, enjoyment and feeling treated with respect each day — then the happiest people in the world are Latin Americans.
The 2014 Global Healthways Wellbeing Index defines “well-being” as a composite of five elements. Within each of these constituents, there are three possible levels of well-being:
Definitions
The Five Elements of Well-Being
• Purpose: Liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals
• Social: Having supportive relationships and love in your life
• Financial: Managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security
• Community: Liking where you live, feeling safe and having pride in your community
• Physical: Having good health and enough energy to get things done dailyLevels of Well-Being
• Thriving: Well-being that is strong and consistent in a particular element
• Struggling: Well-being that is moderate or inconsistent in a particular element
• Suffering: Well-being that is low and inconsistent in a particular element
The world’s happiest people are found in Latin America, not Scandinavia
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According to the 2014 Global Healthways Wellbeing Index, Panama is the happiest country in the world, and most of the top 10 countries are in Latin America. Denmark ranks just 7th in the world:
New country rankings from the Gallup-Healthways Global Well-Being Index show that, for the second time since last year’s inaugural report, Panama has the highest overall well-being in the world. The new report, “2014 Country Well-Being Rankings Report”, ranks 145 countries and areas based on the percentages of their residents that are thriving in three or more well-being elements.
The Americas have a strong presence in the ten countries with the world’s highest overall well-being, with seven countries on the list. After Panama, rounding out the top ten are Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Switzerland, Belize, Chile, Denmark, Guatemala, Austria and Mexico…
[FYI: Norway came 16th, Sweden 26th, USA 23rd, Canada 24th, Australia 40th, UK 44th, Russia 47th, France 48th – VJT.]The Gallup-Healthways Global Well-Being Index uses a holistic definition of well-being and self-reported data from individuals across the globe to create a unique view of societies’ progress on the elements that matter most to well-being: purpose, social, financial, community and physical. It is the most proven, mature and comprehensive measure of well-being in populations…
People in Latin America (and especially, people living in Panama and Costa Rica) experience a lot of positive emotions on a daily basis, according to a Gallup report by Jon Clifton titled, Mood of the World Upbeat on International Happiness Day (March 19, 2015):
As the world marks the third annual International Day of Happiness on Friday, the happiest people on the planet might be Latin Americans. People in Latin America are the most likely in the world to experience a lot of positive emotions on a daily basis, according to Gallup’s Positive Experience Index. In fact, for the first time in Gallup’s 10-year history of global tracking, all of the top 10 countries with the highest Positive Experience Index scores are in Latin America.
Why are the people of Panama so happy?
Journalist Homa Khaleeli examines the secret to happiness in Panama, in a Guardian report titled, World’s happiest country: how did Panama overtake Denmark? (September 17, 2014):
A poll by Gallup and Healthways Global reports that the Central American country now has the most positive population, after 133,000 people from 135 countries were asked to rate their wellbeing in five categories: purpose, social, financial, community and physical.
…So what makes people in Panama so cheery?
Cultural attache for Panama, Laura Montenegro, thinks it is down to the fact the country has a thriving economy and has maintained its traditional values. “Family bonds are very strong here, and on Sundays everyone still gets together,” she says. “So even when people are struggling they don’t feel alone. We have a very beautiful landscape too and even in Panama city you never feel too far from nature. We have a booming economy and financial stability. When the global financial crisis hit, Panama came out of it even better than before, because our banks had been very cautious.”
Another factor that helps explain why Panamians are so happy is that Latin Americans also tend to focus on the positive, according to a Gallup report titled, People Worldwide Are Reporting a Lot of Positive Emotions (May 21, 2014):
That so many people are reporting positive emotions in Latin America at least partly reflects the cultural tendency in the region to focus on the positives in life.
The Danes: contented, rather than happy
What about the people of Denmark? Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that the Danes are contented rather than happy, and that their contentment is based on having low expectations, according to a report by Michael Booth in The Atlantic titled, The Danish Don’t Have the Secret to Happiness (January 30, 2015):
Over the years I have asked many Danes about these happiness surveys—whether they really believe that they are the global happiness champions — and I have yet to meet a single one of them who seriously believes it’s true.…
Newspaper editor Anne Knudsen had an interesting theory relating to why the Danes continue to respond positively to happiness surveys: “In Denmark it is shameful to be unhappy,” she told me. “If you ask me how I am and I start telling you how bad I feel, then it might force you to do something about it. It might put a burden on you to help me. So, that’s one of the main reasons people say things are all right, or even ‘super.’”
Here’s another convincing theory, posited by a Danish friend of mine: “We always come top of those surveys because they ask us at the beginning of the year what our expectations are,” he said. “Then they ask us at the end of the year whether those expectations were met. And because our expectations are so extremely low at the beginning of the year, they tend to get met more easily.”
Could that be the secret of the Danes’ contentedness? Low expectations? … Happiness has never been an “inalienable right” in Denmark, so it could be that the Danes appreciate it all the more when it manifests itself. Perhaps Danish happiness is not really happiness at all, but something much more valuable and durable: contentedness, being satisfied with your lot, low-level needs being met, higher expectations being kept in check.
Other theories about Danish “happiness”: anti-depressants and Danish DNA
A recent report in The Local [Denmark] (March 16, 2016) discusses other theories that have been put forward as to why Danes score well in happiness surveys:
Theories abound for why Danes consistently rank so high in these types of studies. Some say it’s down to having more realistic expectations while others cynically point to the nation’s high use of antidepressants, with upwards of 12 percent of the population on some sort of antidepressant medication.
Another theory is that it is genetic. Eugenio Proto, a researcher at the University of Warwick, told The Local in 2014 that his analysis of data on 131 countries from various international surveys on happiness found that the more ‘Danish’ people are, the happier they are as well.
“If you have Danish DNA, regardless of where you live, you are likely to report high levels of happiness,” Proto said.
2. The success of Sweden and Denmark is due to its social homogeneity and its Protestant work ethic; socialism has nothing to do with it
Regardless of whether they are the world’s happiest nations or not, Sweden and Denmark are undeniably successful countries. Many people put this down to Scandinavia’s cradle-to-grave welfare system. However, a report in the Boston Globe by Jeff Jacoby titled, No, Bernie Sanders, Scandinavia is not a socialist utopia (October 15, 2015) explains why the reality of Scandinavia’s welfare-state utopia doesn’t match the hype. As it turns out, the real roots of Scandinavia’s success lie in its traditional work ethic and its embrace of free-market policies in the nineteenth century:
To begin with, explains Swedish scholar Nima Sanandaji, the affluence and cultural norms upon which Scandinavia’s social-democratic policies rest are not the product of socialism. In “Scandinavian Unexceptionalism,” a penetrating new book published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, Sanandaji shows that the Nordic nations’ prosperity “developed during periods characterized by free-market policies, low or moderate taxes, and limited state involvement in the economy.”
For example, Sweden was a poor nation for most of the 19th century (which helps explain the great wave of Swedish emigration to the United States in the 1800s). That began to change as Stockholm, starting around 1870, turned to free-enterprise reforms Robust capitalism replaced the formerly agrarian system, and Sweden grew rich. “Property rights, free markets, and the rule of law combined with large numbers of well-educated engineers and entrepreneurs,” Sanandaji writes. The result was an environment in which Swedes experienced “an unprecedented period of sustained and rapid economic development.” In fact, between 1870 and 1936, Sweden had the highest growth rate in the industrialized world.
Scandinavia’s hard-left turn didn’t come about until much later…
The real key to Scandinavia’s unique successes isn’t socialism, it’s culture. Social trust and cohesion, a broad egalitarian ethic, a strong emphasis on work and responsibility, commitment to the rule of law — these are healthy attributes of a Nordic culture that was ingrained over centuries. In the region’s small and homogeneous countries (overwhelmingly white, Protestant, and native-born), those norms took deep root. The good outcomes and high living standards they produced antedated the socialist nostrums of the 1970s. Scandinavia’s quality of life didn’t spring from leftist policies. It survived them.
3. Scandinavian societies are egalitarian, but tend to stifle individuality
A strong egalitarian ethic pervades Scandinavian societies. While this egalitarian ethic provides people with a sense of security, it also tends to stifle people’s individuality.
The Jante Law: the conformist social ethic that governs Scandinavia
Most North American readers may not realize that Scandinavian societies are governed by a set of social conventions, which are known unofficially as the “Law of Jante“:
The Jante Law as a concept was created by the Dano-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose, who, in his novel A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks (En flyktning krysser sitt spor, 1933, English translation published in the USA in 1936), identified the Law of Jante as ten rules. Sandemose’s novel portrays the small Danish town Jante …, where nobody is anonymous…
Generally used colloquially in Denmark and the rest of the Nordic countries as a sociological term to negatively describe a condescending attitude towards individuality and success, the term refers to a mentality that de-emphasises individual effort and places all emphasis on the collective, while discouraging those who stand out as achievers.
There are ten rules in the law as defined by Sandemose, all expressive of variations on a single theme and usually referred to as a homogeneous unit: You are not to think you’re anyone special or that you’re better than us.
The ten rules state:
You’re not to think you are anything special.
You’re not to think you are as good as we are.
You’re not to think you are smarter than we are.
You’re not to convince yourself that you are better than we are.
You’re not to think you know more than we do.
You’re not to think you are more important than we are.
You’re not to think you are good at anything.
You’re not to laugh at us.
You’re not to think anyone cares about you.
You’re not to think you can teach us anything.These ten principles or commandments are often claimed to form the “Jante’s Shield” of the Scandinavian people.
How the Jante Law poisons the Danish education system
In a Guardian article titled, Dark lands: the grim truth behind the ‘Scandinavian miracle’ (January 27, 2014), Michael Booth (who lives in Denmark with his Danish wife and family) reports that the Jante law mentality leads Danes to overlook talented people and celebrate mediocrity:
[A] prominent newspaper commentator, Jyllands-Posten’s Niels Lillelund, pinpointed a more serious side effect of the Danes’ Jante Law mentality: “In Denmark we do not raise the inventive, the hardworking, the ones with initiative, the successful or the outstanding; we create hopelessness, helplessness, and the sacred, ordinary mediocrity.”
Last year, in an interview with Rob Montz, a journalist writing for Reason magazine (Scandinavia is a Collectivist Paradise? Not So Much, April 30, 2015), Michael Booth described how Denmark’s egalitarian ethic plays out at school:
We sent our kids to a mainstream state school, which is based on the principles of raising the lower ability children up to the median. It’s all-inclusive, so you can’t exclude children if they’re badly behaved or have special needs or that kind of thing. That didn’t work from our point of view. Our children didn’t take well to having chairs thrown at them and teachers not turning up.
I was in Copenhagen a while ago and I saw two or three kids have an impromptu running race on the pavement and one of the kids won and did an American-football-style celebration. His mother grabbed him by the arm and scolded him for that.
My son’s class did a production of Treasure Island. The teachers rotated the class so that in every scene someone different played Long John Silver or Jack Hawkins or whatever. It made absolute nonsense of any sense of drama or narrative. But again, it was this idea: Everyone should have their turn. Everyone should be treated equally, rather than celebrate one student who was a great singer or actor.
In the same interview, Booth explained why the Scandinavian model could never be implemented in America:
If you want an incredibly equal, socially cohesive society, you definitely lose something by way of individuality, eccentricity, diversity. Often I’m asked, “Could the Nordic template be applied to Britain or America?” And the answer is no. You can’t just hope that people will suddenly become conformist and driven by equality. It doesn’t work that way.
4. Denmark and Sweden have their own social problems
Secular liberals in the United States and Canada are apt to regard Denmark and Sweden as a kind of paradise on earth. Why, they wonder aloud, can’t America be more like Scandinavia?
Guardian reporter Michael Booth painted a very different picture of the Scandinavian countries from the rosy picture we’ve been accustomed to hearing about, in a colorfully worded article titled, Dark lands: the grim truth behind the ‘Scandinavian miracle’ (January 27, 2014).
(a) Something rotten in the state of Denmark?
Here’s what Booth had to say about Denmark, in his report:
Take the Danes, for instance. True, they claim to be the happiest people in the world, but why no mention of the fact they are second only to Iceland when it comes to consuming anti-depressants? …
Why do the Danes score so highly on international happiness surveys? Well, they do have high levels of trust and social cohesion, and do very nicely from industrial pork products, but according to the OECD they also work fewer hours per year than most of the rest of the world. As a result, productivity is worryingly sluggish. How can they afford all those expensively foraged meals and hand-knitted woollens? Simple, the Danes also have the highest level of private debt in the world (four times as much as the Italians, to put it into context; enough to warrant a warning from the IMF), while more than half of them admit to using the black market to obtain goods and services.
Presumably the correlative of this is that Denmark has the best public services? According to the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment rankings (Pisa), Denmark’s schools lag behind even the UK’s. Its health service is buckling too… According to the World Cancer Research Fund, the Danes have the highest cancer rates on the planet...
Most seriously of all, economic equality – which many believe is the foundation of societal success – is decreasing. According to a report in Politiken this month, the proportion of people below the poverty line has doubled over the last decade. Denmark is becoming a nation divided, essentially, between the places which have a branch of Sticks’n’Sushi (Copenhagen) and the rest. Denmark’s provinces have become a social dumping ground for non-western immigrants, the elderly, the unemployed and the unemployable who live alongside Denmark’s 22m intensively farmed pigs, raised 10 to a pen and pumped full of antibiotics (the pigs, that is).
There’s more. It turns out that one-fifth of Danish adults don’t work and live exclusively on public benefits.
(b) How Sweden’s “nanny state” stifles people’s souls
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Booth was similarly unsparing in his depiction of Sweden, in his report:
Anything I say about the Swedes will pale in comparison to their own excoriating self-image. A few years ago, the Swedish Institute of Public Opinion Research asked young Swedes to describe their compatriots. The top eight adjectives they chose were: envious, stiff, industrious, nature loving, quiet, honest, dishonest, xenophobic.…
Effectively a one-party state – albeit supported by a couple of shadowy industrialist families – for much of the 20th century, “neutral” Sweden (one of the world largest arms exporters) continues to thrive economically thanks to its distinctive brand of totalitarian modernism, which curbs freedoms, suppresses dissent in the name of consensus, and seems hell-bent on severing the bonds between wife and husband, children and parents, and elderly on their children. Think of it as the China of the north.
Youth unemployment is higher than the UK’s and higher than the EU average; integration is an ongoing challenge; and as with Norway and Denmark, the Swedish right is on the rise…
Ask the Finns and they will tell you that Swedish ultra-feminism has emasculated their men, but they will struggle to drown their sorrows. Their state-run alcohol monopoly stores, the dreaded Systembolaget, were described by Susan Sontag as “part funeral parlour, part back-room abortionist”.
The myriad successes of the Nordic countries are no miracle, they were born of a combination of Lutheran modesty, peasant parsimony, geographical determinism and ruthless pragmatism... These societies function well for those who conform to the collective median, but they aren’t much fun for tall poppies. Schools rein in higher achievers for the sake of the less gifted; “elite” is a dirty word; displays of success, ambition or wealth are frowned upon.
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I should mention in passing that not only is the illegitimacy rate in Sweden very high (54%, compared to 51% in Denmark, 55% in Norway and 41% in the U.S.A.), but less than 50% of all Swedes currently agree with the proposition that children need a father and a mother to grow up happily. Not a healthy sign. Sadly, America appears to be following suit: 58% of American adults now say that having a baby outside of marriage is morally acceptable.
5. Sweden also has a shocking record of violating individual liberties
As we have seen, even the Scandinavian countries have their share of social problems. Nevertheless, some readers might be inclined to argue that their problems are not as bad as those which afflict the Anglo-Saxon countries – and especially the United States. America does, however, enjoy one great advantage over Sweden: it is still a free country. Sweden is not.
Freedom of Speech is being steadily eroded, in the name of protecting people from “hate speech”
In a 2014 blog article titled, Freedom Of Speech Is Dying In Sweden, Finnish blogger Johannes Joukahainen paints a grim picture of freedom of speech laws in Sweden:
The key difference in the freedom of speech or expression between the United States and Sweden (as well as many other European countries) is that in the US, regulation of the freedom of speech is very lax when compared to continental European legal systems. While the freedom of speech is not absolute in the United States’ legal system, it is much closer to being almost completely unrestricted than in Europe. European legal systems generally have much tighter laws regarding “incitement to hatred” and “hate speech,” to the extent that in recent years they have been used to silence dissenting opinions all across Europe.
The silencing of opposing views via legal norms is nowhere more obvious than in Sweden, where several laws have been passed to make it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to legally argue against “special groups” within the society. A law passed in 2002 (2002:800) notably mentions that “expressing disrespect against groups of people with reference to race, color, national origin, ethnicity, confession of faith or sexual origin” can be sentenced to prison for a time of up to four years for inciting hatred.
The word “disrespect” (“missaktning”) is especially problematic, as the term fairly ambiguous. The law was most notably used to sentence a pastor (Åke Green) for comments against homosexuality during a sermon. The Supreme Court later overturned the conviction, as it did not comply with the European Convention of Human Rights, and hence the conviction would have most likely not have been upheld in the European Court.
The wrong kind of opinions can get you ostracized, according to a report by Singaporean doctoral research student Sadhvi Sharma (Sweden is no haven of liberty, Spiked.com, April 2, 2014):
Sweden is typically depicted as a liberal paradise, an evolved and open-minded society where tolerance and equality define public life… This is certainly what I was led to believe when I moved here six months ago.
But take a closer look at Swedish society and a different picture emerges…
On an anecdotal level, I have found that alongside the legal proscription of hate speech, there is also a set of informal rules about what you can and can’t say – the ‘you can’t say that’ moments of Swedish liberal social and cultural life.
You don’t have to be a racist or a homophobe to be shunned; you just have to voice the ‘wrong’ kind of opinions. For instance, you cannot be opposed to gay marriage, or express support for the Swedish Democrats (a far-right party equivalent to the British National Party, but with actual representatives in parliament), without being virtually excommunicated. And if you dare express scepticism about climate change, be prepared for social wrath. Your decency and your moral standing are judged by whether you hold the ‘correct’ views on feminism, on homosexuality, on race, on the environment, on the Israel-Palestine conflict. ‘Incorrect’ positions will see you cast out.
How the Swedish state comes between parents and their children: the sad case of Domenic Johansson
The Swedish state, in its infinite arrogance, behaves as if it were the sole arbiter of children’s rights, and as if parents had to beg the government for the right to be the legal guardians of their own children. The Swedish government has even abducted children from their parents, for the sole “crime” of daring to homeschool them – at a time when it was legal! Domenic Johansson was one of these children. Seven years ago, he was abducted from his parents, Christer and Annie, just as they were about to board a plane for India. Bob Unruh takes up the story for World News Daily:
When the family tried to leave Sweden in 2009 for India, the mother’s homeland, armed police stormed the plane and abducted young Domenic without a warrant or court order. Social services workers claimed he had some cavities in his baby teeth.
Numerous experts and attorneys have described the incident as a brazen example of “state-napping.”
When one court decision was released in Sweden in favor of the parents, government officials kept the child in custody until they were able to get it reversed.
The frustration at one point prompted Christer to take his son during a brief visit and not return him to social workers, resulting in a prison sentence for the father.
Swedish courts eventually terminated the family by severing the parental rights permanently.
Legal experts from around the world have told WND that the pretexts cited to seize Domenic do not stand up to scrutiny, especially because homeschooling was legal in Sweden at the time, and the right to homeschool is guaranteed under multiple human rights treaties.
Domenic Johansson is not alone. WND reports that dozens of families have already fled abroad, including Jonas Himmelstrand, the chief of the Swedish Homeschooling Association, ROHUS, who fled to Finland with his wife and children.
Since then, the Johanssons’ plight has gotten even worse, according to a report on OneNewsNow.com by Michael Haverluck:
Indefinitely extending homeschooler Domenic Johansson’s prohibition from being able to his parents over the past five years, the Swedish Supreme Court rejected what could possibly be his family’s last appeal to reunite with him.
After being taken away from his parents, Christer and Annie Johansson, seven years ago when he was seven years old — and not being allowed to see them at all over the past five years — the homeschool boy, who is now 14, will likely not see his parents again … at least until he’s an adult.
The decision has all but diminished the Johansson’s last glimmer of hope of seeing their son again, as they can now possibly appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), but it has a dismal record when it comes to rulings concerning claims made by homeschoolers.
There is an old saying: “Be careful what you wish for. You just might get what you want.” There are many social liberals who would like to see North America become more like Scandinavia. If that happens – as appears more and more likely, based on current election trends – then we can expect to see America develop into a highly intolerant country where political correctness reigns supreme and where people’s opinions are governed by “group-think.” In such a country, independence of thought will not be prized, and achievement will no longer be valued. The cult of mediocrity will reign. And yes, many people will be “content,” because their government will tell them that they are safe. But contentment is a pale, anemic thing, when compared to the pure and untrammeled joy that comes with freedom, friendship and love of life. The “Scandinavian solution” leads to a society lacking in vitality. If there is a secret to happiness, Latin America sounds like a better place to look for it.