"If 5% of trains are running late it is a political problem."
Here is the source, check out the readers’ comments on why the Danes say they are so happy.
Denmark claim of the day
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From the comments:
“And take a close look at the suicide rates of women aged 25-40″
I’m never quite sure why suicide rates are taken as a proxy of happiness (to me, they always suggested happiness inequality, for lack of a better term). However, I wonder if anyone can enlighten me; is female suicide a problem in Denmark?
A general question on happiness studies – are they typically of the sort “On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the least happy and 10 being the most, how happy are you with X?” or do they set up a comparison “How much happier/less happy would you be with 25% tax rates and 50% medical coverage rather than 50% tax rates and full medical coverage?” (obviously I have no clue what the tax rate medical coverage combo is, I’m just using the numbers as an example). Basically, which would you be happier with and by how much?
I mean, if you found a happiness study that said that Mexicans in Mexico were happier than USians in the US, it would seem pretty odd given that there are a bunch of individuals in Mexico who would love to be in the US, and probably not too many people in the US who would love to move to Mexico. Without a comparison based approach no one has any idea what the individual answering the survey is using as a reference for their happiness comparison.
Re France: despite the spin, most French unhappiness is traceable to all the North African migrants swarming and pillaging the cities, not the moribund economy.
I think this is the most I have learned in a day from a blog about Denmark.
@ Robert: Not obviously. Maybe it’s just a myth used by the Danes to keep expectations low
Here are some numbers on suicide rates from the WHO:
http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suiciderates/en/
I’m not saying it’s fantastic. Denmark is doing worse than both the US and the UK, but better than many other countries, for instance Austria, Finland, France and Switzerland (not to mention Eastern Europe and Japan).
By the way, should we give some countries extra credit for potential honest reporting here? For example, do we believe that suicides almost never happen in Albania? Iran? Armenia?
Regarding suicide stats, cultural factors are important here also,
especially impacting reporting. So, in some societies suicide is
considered to be honorable, e.g. Japan. In others it is a sin or even
illegal, threatening heirs from inheriting and so forth. So, in those
kinds of societies it gets covered up and seriously underreported, with
some of that going on in the US, although not as much as in some other
societies. In the Nordic societies suicide is not an honorable positive
like in Japan, but it is not treated with the coverup approach as in many
other places and hence gets pretty honestly reported. Hence, the high
suicide rates there are probably overexaggerated in relative terms, although
clearly there are plenty of suicides happening.
odograph,
Barkley Rosser mentioned seasonal affective disorder, if that’s what you’re talking about. Here’s a world map.
Suicide is pure latitude. Beyond that, I wouldn’t believe anything else in the numbers.
But wikipedia also claims that US suicides peak in the spring.
The reason Danes are happy is because the country doesn’t have obvious extremes of wealth and poverty.
No one is so much a ‘winner’ that it attracts envy, or so much a ‘loser’ that they need fear starving.
The workplace reflects that: Danish companies are very democratic, in the sense the managing director treats the floor cleaner with respect. Everyone is expected to take pride in their work- -the quality of fixtures and fittings like desks, and natural light, in the workplace is far superior to your average British company.
Psychologists have shown this. The competition for status and positional goods makes humans unhappy.
I’ve worked on trading floors where people made millions of pounds each. Yet they were terribly unhappy and angry, with near fist-fights at bonus time.
This trait of human beings may not be optimal for economic efficiency, but it does make for a happier society.
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