Abstract
Denmark’s top position in various rankings of country happiness is well-documented. This study goes beyond the national average comparisons and investigates whether Denmark’s top position is also found when we disaggregate data in line with social categories often used within the social sciences. The central measure is the empirical probability that a given population subgroup in Denmark has significantly higher happiness compared to another country’s similar subgroup in a given year. All five rounds of the European Social Survey are used but only the sixteen countries that were surveyed in each of the five rounds are included in this study. The results show that Denmark’s position at the top of the happiness scale is also robust when we look at population subgroups, but not in the sense that Denmark dominates all countries for all years. Instead, a modified version of robustness is necessary; Denmark very often has significantly higher happiness levels than in other countries, only sometimes has the same happiness levels as in other countries, very rarely is it dominated by other countries, and finally it is never dominated by other countries in all 5 years for a given subpopulation characteristic. This conclusion is quite insensitive to the applied SWB measure and the applied significance level.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bijl, R. (2011). Never waste a good crisis: Towards social sustainable development. Social Indicators Research, 102(1), 157–168.
Binswanger, Mathias. (2006). Why Does Income Growth Fail to Make Us Happier? Searching for the Treadmills behind the Paradox of Happiness. Journal of Socio-Economics, 35(2), 366–381.
Blanchflower, D. G. (2008). International evidence on well-being. National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, NBER Working Papers: 14318.
Blanchflower, D. G., & Oswald, A. J. (2008). Hypertension and Happiness across Nations. Journal of Health Economics, 27(2), 218–233.
Blekesaune, M., & Quadagno, J. (2003). Public attitudes toward welfare state policies. A comparative analysis of 24 nations. European Sociological Review, 19(5), 415–427.
Buchardt, M. (2013). Pedagogical transformations of “religion” into “culture” in Danish state mass schooling from the 1900 s to the 1930 s. Paedagogica Historica, 49(1), 126–138.
Clausen, J., Heinesen, E., Hummelgaard, H., Husted, L., & Rosholm, M. (2009). The effect of integration policies on the time until regular employment of newly arrived immigrants: Evidence from Denmark. Labour Economics, 16(4), 409–417.
Cuxart, A. & Riba, C. (2004). The European Social Survey. Methodological Aspects. Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Economics Working Papers.
Diener, E., & Oishi, S. (2000). Money and happiness: Income and subjective well-being across nations. In E. Diener & E. M. Suh (Eds.), Culture and subjective well-being (pp. 185–218). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Easterlin, R. A. (1974). Does economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence. In P. A. David & M. W. Reder (Eds.), Nations and households in economic growth: Essays in honor of moses abramovitz. New York: Academic Press, Inc.
Easterlin, R. A. (2001). Income and happiness: Towards a unified theory. Economic Journal, 111, 465–484.
Easterlin, R. A., McVey, L. A., Switek, M., Sawangfa, O., & Zweig, J. S. (2010). The happiness-income paradox revisited. Proceeding of the National Acadamy of Sciences, 107(52), 22463–22468.
Ferrer-i-Carbonell, A., & Frijters, P. (2004). How important is methodology for the estimates of the determinants of happiness? Economic Journal, 114(497), 641–659.
Fleche, S., Smith, C. & Sorsa, P. (2012). Exploring determinants of subjective wellbeing in OECD countries: Evidence from the world value survey. OECD Publishing, OECD Statistics Working Papers: 2012/1.
Jørgensen, M. B. (2011). Understanding the research-policy nexus in Denmark and Sweden: The field of migration and integration. British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 13(1), 93–109.
Kaspersen, L. B., & Lindvall, J. (2008). Why no religious politics? The secularization of poor relief and primary education in Denmark and Sweden. European Journal of Sociology, 49(1), 119–143.
Kroll, C. (2011). Different things make different people happy: Examining social capital and subjective well-being by gender and parental status. Social Indicators Research, 104(1), 157–177.
Larsen, C. A. (2008). The political logic of labour market reforms and popular images of target groups. Journal of European Social Policy, 18(1), 50–63.
Lee, D. R. (2011). Happiness, adaptation, and decreasing marginal utility of income. Journal of Private Enterprise, 27(1), 63–73.
Madonia, G., Cracolici, M. F., & Cuffaro, M. (2013). Exploring wider well-being in the EU-15 countries: An empirical application of the Stiglitz report. Social Indicators Research, 111(1), 117–140.
OECD. (2009). Doing better for children. Paris: OECD Publishing.
OECD. (2011a). Doing better for families. Paris: OECD Publishing.
OECD (2011b). Growing Income Inequality in OECD Countries: What drives it and how can policy tackle it ? Forum, Paris, 2 May 2011.
Ovaska, T., & Takashima, R. (2010). Does a rising tide lift all the boats? Explaining the national inequality of happiness. Journal of Economic Issues, 44(1), 205–223.
Powdthavee, N. (2010). How much does money really matter? Estimating the causal effects of income on happiness. Empirical Economics, 39(1), 77–92.
Sarracino, F. (2012). Money, sociability and happiness: Are developed countries doomed to social erosion and unhappiness?: Time-series analysis of social capital and subjective well-being in western Europe, Australia, Canada and Japan. Social Indicators Research, 109(2), 135–188.
Statistics Denmark. (2013). www.statistikbanken.dk. Copenhagen, Denmark. Viewed on June 9th.
Svendsen, G. L. H., Svendsen, G. T., & Graeff, P. (2012). Explaining the emergence of social trust: Denmark and Germany. Historical Social Research, 37(3), 351–367.
van de Wetering, E. J., van Exel, N. J. A., & Brouwer, W. B. (2010). Piecing the jigsaw puzzle of adolescent happiness. Journal of Economic Psychology, 31(6), 923–935.
Veenhoven, R. (2013). Average happiness in 149 nations 2000-2009. World database of happiness. Rank report average happiness. Internet: worlddatabaseofhappi ness.eur.nl/hap_nat/findingreports/RankReport_AverageHappiness.php. Viewed on 2013-06-09.
Vestergaard, C. (2010). A choice between authority and alternative conflict resolution? A study of how social services in Denmark Handle Separating Families in Conflict. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the The Law and Society Association, Renaissance Chicago Hotel, Chicago, IL, May 24, 2010.
Zak, P. J. (2005). The neuroeconomics of trust. In R. Frantz (Ed.), Two minds: Intuition and analysis in the history of economic thought. London: Springer.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hussain, M.A. The Robustness of High Danish National Happiness: A Temporal Cross-Country Analysis of Population Subgroups. Soc Indic Res 118, 759–774 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-013-0431-7
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-013-0431-7