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Denmark has received an enormous amount of international attention in recent years. The reason is not hard to understand: as more and more popular attention is focused on the study of human happiness, Denmark’s status as the most likely candidate for the title of the single happiest country in the world naturally invites attention to it as a potential role model. One recent manifestation of this phenomenon was in a recent Democratic Party debate, in which Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders discussed Denmark in precisely these terms. Their exchange prompted a minor media tsunami (e.g. Time, CNBC, Washington Post, Slate, The National Review, to name just a few) attempting to explain “why Denmark?” What, they asked, makes Denmark so special? What, in particular, makes the Danes so satisfied with their lives?
From the point of view of the scholarly literature on happiness, the answer is very clear: Denmark is a paragon of the “social democratic” approach to public policy. While there are doubtless cultural and social features of the country that contribute to its high quality of life, the most important reasons are the two distinguishing characteristics of social democracy: progressive public policies and a strong labor movement. This may not be to everyone’s liking, depending on political taste, but it certainly is what the peer reviewed (and thus non-partisan) research suggests.
Alex Lickerman, a fellow blogger at PT, thoughtfully (and critically) summarizes some of the academic research on this subject in a post from last year. Similarly, in this 2014 article for the peer reviewed journal Social Forces entitled “Assessing the Impact of the Size and Scope of Government on Human Well-Being”, my colleagues and I find, controlling for other factors, “robust evidence that citizens find life more satisfying as the degree of government intervention in the economy increases.” The study focused on the universe of industrial democracies over a twenty-six year period, findng that life satisfaction was positively associated with (a) the generosity of the social safety net (e.g. unemployment benefits and old-age pensions), (b) the general size of government (“government consumption”) as a share of the economy, and (c) the extent to which governments foster pro-worker labor market regulations (such as a higher minimum wage, or rules that provide job security). In all three areas, we found the social democratic approach—a generous welfare state, a larger state sector, and economic regulation to protect workers—improved quality of life.
It is important to note that these results obtained when controlling for all the other factors we know affect happiness at the individual level (e.g. marital status, income, education, etc.) and country level (e.g. GDP per capita, the unemployment rate, social capital, etc.). More importantly still, the analysis suggested that the positive benefits of social democracy “affect the [life] satisfaction of everyone, rich and poor alike.” Put differently, the analysis found that social democracy did not benefit just the working class, but everyone: “the effect of government intervention on life satisfaction is not moderated by an individual’s income."
Similar conclusions have been presented in many other peer reviewed articles (including The American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, and The Journal of Politics, among others). Thus, for instance, a recent review of the scholarly literature by Professor Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn and his colleagues in the Journal of Applied Psychology, concluded that the collective evidence strongly indicates that “societies led by leftist or liberal governments (also referred to as welfare states)” have the highest levels of life satisfaction, controlling for other factors. Their own statistical analysis supported this emerging consensus.
Denmark, of course, like its Scandinavian neighbors (who enjoy similarly high levels of well-being), is a country with a notoriously generous welfare state, a government that is large as measured by its share of the country’s GDP, and labor market rules that are designed to protect workers (such as its $20 an hour minimum wage). Here’s the first and most important reason the Danes enjoy such a high quality of life: because of the welfare state and an otherwise activist government that attempts to govern in the interest of ordinary citizens.
There is a second and related core reason for Denmark’s high level of well-being: the strength or organized labor in that country. While many Americans are skeptical about unions, their final contribution to quality of life is difficult to dispute. A number of peer reviewed articles (in journals such as Social Forces and Social Indicators Research, among others) have documented two relationships: (a) belonging to a labor union makes one more satisfied with their lives than otherwise similar individuals who do not belong, and (b) the overall level of unionization (the percentage of workers who belong to unions, or union “density”) strongly affects a country’s overall level of satisfaction, for both members and non-members (and again for rich and poor alike).
In my book The Political Economy of Human Happiness (Cambridge University Press, 2013) I show that these patterns occur both cross-nationally and across the American states, while a new paper forthcoming at the peer reviewed Labor Studies Journal, by Professors Patrick Flavin and Greg Shufeldt, demonstrates that in the United States “union membership boosts life satisfaction across demographic groups regardless if someone is rich or poor, male or female, or young or old.”
Why these relationships? Briefly stated, at the individual-level, belonging to a union provides higher wages and benefits, more job security, and more of a say in how work is organized. At the national level, unions provide a political voice for the working and middle-classes, helping to ensure that a country’s general pattern of public policy is conducive to creating “the greatest good for the greatest number.”
Denmark has among the highest levels of union density in the world at about 70% of workers. In the United States, by comparison, only about 11% of workers belong to unions. This is not a coincidence vis-à-vis happiness: unions help to produce a greater level of happiness, and to help it be distributed in a more equitable manner, including to those who are not themselves union members.
There are indeed many reasons to believe that unions promote better lives, not just for their members, for everyone, by helping to produce and sustain an equitable and just society of shared prosperity.
Unions, in conjunction with progressive public policies, produce, in sum, Denmark--the happiest country in the world. It is in that sense that Denmark does indeed provide a helpful map toward a better society.
You can find the full-text of several of my peer reviewed articles on happiness and politics (and read a chapter from my book The Political Economy of Human Happiness) here.
