Pod Insights Freakonomics Radio How to Be Happy (Rebroadcast) About this episode The U. N.’s World Happiness Report — created to curtail our unhealthy obsession with G. D. P. — is dominated every year by the Nordic countries. We head to Denmark to learn the secrets of this happiness epidemic (and to see if we should steal them).
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:33 Stephen J. Dubner? Hey there. It's Stephen Dubner. Happy New Year. How happy will it be? Well, that depends, at least a little bit, on where you live. The Scandinavian countries, for instance, seem to be particularly good at producing happiness. How does that work? That's the question we seek to answer in this episode, which is called "How to Be Happy." We first released it last year, but happiness being an ongoing pursuit, we thought you wouldn't mind a refresher. We'll be back next week with new episodes. Thanks, as always, for listening, and again, Happy New Year.
3:15 Stephen J. Dubner? Until a few years ago, Helen Russell was leading a seemingly happy life in London, working as an editor for the fashion magazine Marie Claire. True, she did feel restless at times. Also true, she and her husband had been struggling with fertility treatments. That said, she had no intention of leaving the UK.
3:33 Speaker 01 Until, out of the blue, one wet Wednesday, my husband came home and told me he'd been offered his dream job working for LEGO in Denmark. And we knew nothing about the country, as many people in other countries are fairly ignorant of Scandinavia. We couldn't really have pinpointed it on a map.
3:49 Stephen J. Dubner? They decided to go for it. But as soon as they arrived, in a small town in the rural hinterlands of Denmark, in the dead of winter, she had regrets.
3:59 Speaker 01 My husband left to go to work at 7:30 AM. I didn't know anyone. I didn't speak the language. I was in this freezing cold, dark country all by myself. I did a lot of howling at the moon, thinking I'd made the biggest mistake ever. And I did a lot of eating Danish pastries, because as a repressed Brit, I like to eat my emotions.
4:15 Stephen J. Dubner? But Russell had heard, as you may have heard, that Denmark is routinely at or near the very top of the annual happiness ranking compiled by the United Nations. And the other Nordic countries, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and Finland, pretty much dominate the top 10. Russell naturally wondered, why? What are the causes and consequences of this alleged happiness epidemic? Was it for real? What are the downsides? She set out to answer these questions in a book she called The Year of Living Danishly, uncovering the secrets of the world's happiest country. Along the way, she asked nearly every Dane she met how they would rank their happiness on a scale of one to 10. A funny thing happened
4:57 Stephen J. Dubner? during this process. Russell herself became quite a bit happier.
5:01 Speaker 01 I was maybe a, I'd have said a six was a good day in London. And now I'm generally on, on that eight. And sometimes it's a nine if I'm lucky.
5:10 Stephen J. Dubner? You're practically Danish, yeah?
5:11 Speaker 01 Practically Danish.
5:13 Stephen J. Dubner? Today on Freakonomics Radio, what causes all this happiness?
5:17 Speaker 02 What it is, I think, is a kind of ethos of life.
5:22 Stephen J. Dubner? What's keeping less happy countries from copying it? The price tag. And an economist who thinks we should worry more about well being and less about traditional measures like GDP.
5:34 Speaker 02 My God, let's get serious about the quality of our lives and stop this nonsense of chasing such a poor indicator that is taking us actually farther away from our happiness.
6:04 Speaker 03 From Stitcher and Dubner Productions, this is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner.
6:19 Stephen J. Dubner? I recently spent a few days in Copenhagen. There was one person I was very excited to meet.
6:25 Speaker 04 So my name is Mike Viking, and I'm the CEO of the Happiness Research Institute here in Copenhagen.
6:30 Stephen J. Dubner? And is Viking a common surname here?
6:33 Speaker 04 No. So I think we're a handful of people called Viking. My dad is called Wolf Viking. I have a brother called Kenneth. I have a couple of nephews. One of them is called Max Viking. So he really needs to grow up big and tall.
6:47 Stephen J. Dubner? Do you, do you do Halloween here? Where you dress up as costumes? I'm just curious.
6:52 Speaker 04 I see where this is going.
6:53 Stephen J. Dubner? Were you a Viking every year when you were a child?
6:55 Speaker 04 No, but there was one episode, yes.
6:58 Stephen J. Dubner? Viking has a background in political science, economics and sociology, all of which figure in understanding what's called happiness.
7:06 Speaker 04 I mean, one of the challenges we have with happiness is of course to define it and to measure it. And we should first and foremost acknowledge that it's a wide umbrella term. So you have one understanding of what happiness is and I have another one. So we need to break it down and look at different components. So the first is an overall life satisfaction. And here you essentially ask your respondents to take a step back and evaluate your life.
7:32 Stephen J. Dubner? Happiness researchers also track people's moods in the moment.
7:36 Speaker 04 How happy are you right now? Or how happy were you yesterday? And there we can see that whether what day of the week it is impacts our happiness levels. And people are happier, no big surprise on the weekend, than they are on Monday mornings.
7:50 Stephen J. Dubner? They also measure people's sense of meaning.
7:52 Speaker 04 That builds on what Aristotle thought the good life was. So to him, the good life was the meaningful life. So here we try to understand, do people have a sense of purpose?
8:01 Stephen J. Dubner? A sense of purpose, a self-evaluation of life satisfaction. You may think all this sounds a bit squishy, especially to an economist, yes?
8:12 Speaker 02 I'm going to answer anything you're going to ask me.
8:15 Stephen J. Dubner? OK, we'll ask some questions. First one's easy. Would you please introduce yourself?
8:20 Speaker 02 Jeff Sachs, a university professor at Columbia University. And I am special advisor to the United Nations Secretary General on the Sustainable Development Goals. One part of that is human well-being. And so I am a co-editor each year of the World Happiness Report.
8:43 Stephen J. Dubner? The World Happiness Report, that's where Denmark and the other Nordic countries always come out on top. Jeff Sachs, just so you know, isn't some woo-woo feel-good witch doctor. You may have heard him on our program before talking about his work as an interventional economist for governments in crisis.
8:59 Speaker 02 I worked in Poland and in Russia after the communist system collapsed.
9:05 Stephen J. Dubner? Also in Bolivia, trying to tame its hyperinflation.
9:09 Speaker 02 And I worked in Latin America very extensively for several years after the work in Bolivia until
9:16 Stephen J. Dubner? The calls kept coming.
9:18 Speaker 02 And then in 1995, another quite decisive turn for me was an invitation to go to Zambia and to see what this experience and these lessons might mean for Africa.
9:35 Stephen J. Dubner? Over time and because of those experiences, Sacks came to believe that his fellow economists had left something out of their worldview, something in fact quite vital.
9:45 Speaker 02 The economics profession took a very bad turn roughly 150 years ago when it decided that since it wasn't possible to measure happiness or to compare happiness across individuals, we would look basically at consumer preferences.
10:08 Stephen J. Dubner? The inspiration to incorporate happiness into economic modeling came from a rather unlikely source.
10:15 Speaker 02 So back in 1971, the fourth king of Bhutan, who also brought democracy to the country and was was an extremely, extremely wise leader, he raised the question already, why are we pursuing gross national product when we should be pursuing gross national happiness? It was such a wonderful phrase and GNH entered the vocabulary of a small niche of economists
10:54 Speaker 02 and a small niche of Buddhists and others who were dreaming of this already decades ago. But Bhutan went ahead as a very poor country and actually set up the mechanisms for A detailed survey measurement of dimensions of gross national happiness. It set up a gross national happiness commission. It ordered that all legislation should be evaluated, a kind of happiness benefit cost ratio.
11:28 Stephen J. Dubner? Sacks began meeting with the king and they brought more world leaders and economists into the happiness conversation. This ultimately led to the creation of the UN's World Happiness Report. The concept was jarring to many of Sacks's colleagues, particularly in the US.
11:45 Speaker 02 Well, in our country, we don't talk about almost anything else in the public space. It's all about growth, GDP, incomes. Of course, there is a massive industry of happiness, studies, self-help manuals, helping people to overcome all sorts of unhappiness, is trying to help people find meaning in their lives, trying to help people make better decisions about their lives.
12:16 Stephen J. Dubner? To Sacks, the booming self-help industry in rich countries like the US reveals a disturbing paradox.
12:24 Speaker 02 We have the paradox that income per person rises in the United States, but happiness does not. And it's not that that's because humans are humans. It's because the US is falling behind other countries because we are not pursuing dimensions of happiness that are extremely important. Our physical health, the mental health in our community, the social support, the honesty in government. And this is weighing down American well-being.
13:00 Stephen J. Dubner? Like the Danish happiness expert Mike Viking, Sacks finds wisdom in the ancient Greek model.
13:06 Speaker 02 I go with Aristotle. He's my guy. He's my favorite philosopher. And he pointed out in the Nicomachean Ethics, 2,300 years ago, that to be happy requires the good benefit of having material needs met. So don't deny those, he said. But he also said, only aiming for wealth.
13:34 Speaker 02 Single-mindedly pursuing a higher wealth is certainly no way to happiness. And after a certain point of income, work on other things, work on your friendship, work on your mental health, work on your physical health, work on good governance, work on your charitableness. Because in this kind of world, a good life is a balanced and a virtuous life, not a single-minded pursuit of income.
14:09 Stephen J. Dubner? Okay. If these are the factors that supposedly generate happiness, community, good mental and physical health, good governance, and since Denmark and the other Nordic countries top the happiness rankings, let's take a look at how they address those factors. Let's start with the social safety net. Mike Viking again.
14:30 Speaker 04 There is obviously universal healthcare. There's also free university education. In fact, now it's-
14:41 Stephen J. Dubner? Up through university, I mean, along from the lower level, too. It's always-
14:44 Speaker 04 Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So heavily subsidized kindergarten, primary school free, high school free, and university free. And you get a government grant, and that creates also a lot of social mobility.
15:00 Stephen J. Dubner? As does healthcare not being tied to a job, which we have mostly in the States.
15:05 Speaker 04 Exactly.
15:06 Stephen J. Dubner? Danes also work fewer hours. On average, 27.1 hours per week compared to 34.2 in the US. To Helen Russell, moving here from Britain, that was a big change.
15:19 Speaker 01 There's no stigma to clocking off. People work mainly from eight till four in offices. There's no stigma to leaving at four because you've got to go and pick up your kids from daycare, you've got to go and make supper, or you just need to get on with your hobbies.
15:32 Stephen J. Dubner? Denmark strives toward egalitarianism on the gender front, and its parental leave policies are famously generous.
15:40 Speaker 01 So there's fifty two weeks, both parents can share it between them. And you can defer, I think it's thirteen weeks of this for, I believe it's up to eight or possibly nine years. So I have a friend whose family are, she has two children and the youngest one is now five, but she's taking thirteen weeks off next year to go on a big trip around Australia. And I was outraged by this. I think, oh, my goodness, isn't this sort of taking the mick a little bit? She said, no, it's perfectly acceptable here. So, yeah, it's just a different mindset, I guess.
16:12 Speaker 02 The basic idea of social democracy is to pay attention to social cohesion, to provide ample social goods like healthcare available automatically for all, education at all levels available for all, vacation time available for all.
16:35 Stephen J. Dubner? Jeff Sachs argues this strong social support in the Nordic model contributes to a number of healthy outcomes.
16:42 Speaker 02 The life expectancy is higher, our obesity epidemic does not exist in those countries, our opioid epidemic does not exist in those countries.
16:55 Speaker 04 There is also a high level of trust towards the government. And that goes hand in hand with the Nordic countries being at the low end when it comes to corruption or perceived corruption. We have a different perception of the state. So what I see from over here, you feel you need to be protected from the state. Is that a fair assumption?
17:16 Stephen J. Dubner? It's a fair assumption for a significant fraction, at least of Americans, let's say, not all, certainly.
17:22 Speaker 04 And people in the Nordic countries will feel that the state protects us from things.
17:31 Speaker 04 The high level of social security is one element that there is a notion that if you fall, you will be picked up. So I think we see more the state on our side and helping us create good conditions for good lives.
17:48 Stephen J. Dubner? Scandinavia also gets high marks on interpersonal social trust.
17:52 Speaker 04 So if you ask Danes and Norwegians and Swedes, do you feel that most people can be trusted or can't you become too careful when it comes to strangers?
18:03 Stephen J. Dubner? Right.
18:03 Speaker 04 Three out of four would say yes, you can trust most strangers. The global average is one in four.
18:09 Speaker 01 So you may have heard of, there was a story in New York a few years ago of a Danish woman who was there who left her child sleeping outside in a pram, which is what you do in Denmark, and was arrested for child neglect. And lots of people in Denmark didn't understand why it was such a fuss because in Denmark, people trust most people. And this plays into everything. You're not anxious if you trust the people around you, you're not scared they're going to rob you to put food on their table.
18:32 Stephen J. Dubner? And have you become more trusting as well?
18:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don't want to reveal too much about where I live, but I regularly forget to lock car and or house.
18:41 Stephen J. Dubner? But considering the very high level of support in Denmark for citizens from prenatal, really, until literally after death, my question, which is maybe unanswerable, is would you say that the very high level of social trust is a result of such a generous social security system or the cause of it?
19:07 Speaker 01 That's a really interesting question, and it's something that academics in Denmark are still very much grappling with. Some of the economists that I spoke to for the Year of Living Danishly put it that actually these high levels of trust have been here that predate the social services and the social welfare system. Other people argue it's the other way around. There's something interesting about the experience of living Danishly that increases your levels of trust. So immigrants to Denmark also end up adopting Danish values or their levels of trust rise as the experience of being around Danes and being in this environment starts to sort of filter in and bed down.
19:51 Speaker 01 So it's a real debate, actually. There's a bit of both.
19:55 Stephen J. Dubner? Russell enumerates several other factors that may contribute to a relatively high state of Danish happiness. Most people belong to at least a few clubs or community groups. They spend a lot of time on fitness and outdoor activities, and they don't put too much emphasis on material possessions.
20:12 Speaker 04 Yes, it's frowned upon to flash your wealth, to flash your success.
20:17 Stephen J. Dubner? Mike Viking again.
20:18 Speaker 04 That is quite common in the Nordic countries. So it also sort of puts a lid on conspicuous consumption.
20:26 Stephen J. Dubner? So do you believe that that is a driver, major or minor, of overall happiness, that people feel less compelled to compare themselves to others?
20:34 Speaker 04 Yes, a minor one, but I think it's one. And, yeah, I mean, there's so many studies out there that show that inequality is bad for health, for crime rates, for murder rates, and all sorts of things.
20:50 Speaker 01 It's really interesting. So I literally this morning, I'd just come from an independent coffee bar, and there's an equality there. There is not a difference between the person who is serving me coffee and the person buying the coffee. You can talk as equals because you know that you are both probably after tax taking home around about the same amount, and everybody's is having a sort of decent life. On the flip side, there's not the same service culture. I was just back in the UK for work, and oh, my goodness, everyone was so nice to me. And when I go to the States, I mean, that's even more so. And I have to remind myself, oh, they're being nice to me because there's a financial imperative. And of course, there is more of a service culture in some places than others. In Denmark, that's not the case. I mean, you don't expect bells and
21:34 Speaker 01 whistles, but I'm kind of fine with that now.
21:41 Stephen J. Dubner? There is one more Danish attribute that's said to greatly contribute to happiness. It's spelled H-Y-G-G-E.
21:51 Speaker 04 So it's pronounced hygge.
21:53 Stephen J. Dubner? Hygge.
21:53 Speaker 04 Well done. So I think the best explanation of what hygge is, is the art of creating a nice atmosphere. So it's about togetherness. It's about pleasure. It's about warmth. It's about relaxation. And that is a key cornerstone of Danish culture. To Danes, hygge is what freedom perhaps is to the Americans.
22:15 Stephen J. Dubner? But I gather there are also, you know, physical components of it that are specific. A lot of candles or good lighting and good pastries and so on.
22:23 Speaker 04 Right.
22:24 Stephen J. Dubner? Pillows.
22:25 Speaker 04 So because hygge is about an atmosphere, lighting is important and lamps are important. Candles are crucial. So Danes burn twice as much candle wax as number two in Europe, which is Austria.
22:41 Stephen J. Dubner? Viking is the author of an international bestseller called The Little Book of Hygge.
22:47 Speaker 04 And I receive a lot of letters from readers saying, I've been having hygge all my life. I just didn't know there was a word for it. So I think what we did with hygge was we gave a word or a language for people to appreciate something they were already doing.
23:04 Speaker 01 It's in every area of Danish life. And I'm working with the UNESCO right now to get it put on the World Heritage Intangibles list. Studies show that if you're practicing hygge, it's a bit like self kindness, but without the woo. And it makes you nicer to the other people. And this has a ripple effect out into society. So it really does contribute to happiness.
23:24 Stephen J. Dubner? Coming up after the break, what if all that hygge just isn't happening for you?
23:30 Speaker 04 If everybody around you feels that life is great, then that could create a stronger contrast and maybe you start to blame yourself.
23:36 Stephen J. Dubner? And how do Denmark and its neighbors feel about sharing their happiness, especially with immigrants?
23:43 Speaker 02 Scandinavia has, yeah, we love our social democracy, but it's just for us.
23:48 Stephen J. Dubner? That's coming up right after this. If you want to hear more Freakonomics Radio, you can find every episode going all the way back to 2010 on the Stitcher app and at Freakonomics.com. And you can always listen to the most recent three months' worth of episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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26:44 Stephen J. Dubner? I was recently in Copenhagen, speaking with Mike Viking. Seriously, his real name, Mike Viking, who is CEO of the Happiness Research Institute. I'd been hearing about all the factors that make Denmark and the other Nordic countries rank so high on the UN's World Happiness Report. The generous healthcare and childcare and education benefits, the strong levels of social trust and the Hooga. It was all sounding a bit too good to be true.
27:16 Stephen J. Dubner? Wouldn't you think that more governments around the world would look at the Scandinavian model and say, wow, they are thriving economically and they're thriving on a happiness and life satisfaction level? Let's just do what they're doing. Why do you think it hasn't happened even more?
27:30 Speaker 04 The price tax. So I think that the tax level is what scares politicians, but I do sense a larger and larger interest. I get visits on a weekly basis, especially from South Korea. We do see a lot of interest in trying to understand what is it that is working so well in the Nordic countries that seems to have a positive impact on people's lives?
27:57 Speaker 02 Now, one thing that those countries do, which is unimaginable in the US context as of today, they tax themselves and tax themselves.
28:10 Stephen J. Dubner? That, again, is the economist Jeff Sachs, an editor of the World Happiness Report.
28:16 Speaker 02 And they end up paying, oh, 45 to 50% of national income.
28:23 Speaker 01 A lot of people are paying around 50%.
28:25 Stephen J. Dubner? And that is the recent British transplant, Helen Russell.
28:28 Speaker 01 I'd say most things, if you're doing your grocery shop, it's maybe 20% more. Goods and services are very expensive. So, yeah, life is more expensive. There is not very much extra when you've paid for everything.
28:43 Stephen J. Dubner? But the data show that high taxes and prices are generally considered worthwhile.
28:49 Speaker 04 Nine out of ten Danes are happily paying their taxes. There is an acknowledgement that we collectively invest in the public good, and that is fed back to people in terms of quality of life.
29:02 Speaker 01 There is something about the taxes, when you're paying that much tax, you have to trust that this is all going to be worth it. And like life, you know, we're all trapped by something. We have to choose what we're going to be trapped by. And for me, that seems quite a good thing to put my chips on.
29:15 Stephen J. Dubner? One counterargument is that, well, if you have that, what you don't have are the huge rewards for innovation and inventions. So there are a lot of things that we complain about in the US, including income inequality, including the lack of a lot of the social service network that a lot of European countries have. But we are the country that makes Apple and Google and on and on and on. It seems that there's an upside to status seeking as well as downsides.
29:45 Speaker 01 You're right in terms of accomplishment. There isn't the same incentive, perhaps, to go the extra mile that there might be in the UK and the US, I'd say. So I know that in some places of work, for instance, if your team are working on something, but it's four o'clock, they're going to go home. And so that can be a frustration for people coming from other countries who are used to perhaps, you know, people to stay there to really impress the boss or to just do that extra bit. I think for me and from weighing up the, you know, the pros and cons, that there are always trade offs. And the idea that you can have most of the people doing OK and fairly happy,
30:30 Speaker 01 well, no, you know, pretty happy, actually, that feels sort of worth it, rather than a couple of tall poppies and everyone else in the gutter.
30:39 Speaker 04 I think perhaps Danes have lower materialistic ambitions.
30:44 Speaker 04 Than in in some countries. But in terms of having an interesting job, having a happy family, having a healthy hobby and and keeping fit, I think there is a lot of sort of expectations that people want to live up to.
31:01 Stephen J. Dubner? So you've told us that Denmark and the other Scandinavian countries are relatively very high on social trust compared to the rest of the world. And you've told us that social trust drives happiness. We also know that social trust decreases when diversity increases. At least that's what a lot of literature that I've seen has to say. And we know that Denmark and other Scandinavian countries are relative to other rich countries, the US and the UK in particular, are not very diverse. How much do you think the social trust in a place like Denmark is driven by some version of homogeneity?
31:43 Stephen J. Dubner? I've read that something like eighty five percent of Danish citizens are not only born here but derived, you know, are ethnically derived from Danes. How much of it is just a sort of comfort with belonging to a club that you belong to?
31:58 Speaker 04 It's true that there is, in some of the Nordic countries, a high level of homogeneity. In Sweden, it's much less. They've been much more welcoming to refugees and immigrants in the past years than than, for instance, Denmark and Norway. But then again, I mean, if you see the level of trust that have not declined.
32:20 Stephen J. Dubner? In Sweden yet, you're saying?
32:21 Speaker 04 In Sweden, in Denmark, in Norway, in those countries that have accepted immigrants.
32:26 Stephen J. Dubner? Has it been long enough, though, to know? Like with the refugees coming primarily from Syria and Iraq.
32:31 Speaker 04 Right.
32:31 Stephen J. Dubner? It's relatively recent.
32:32 Speaker 04 That's true.
32:33 Stephen J. Dubner? And I also wonder, when I see those numbers, I wonder whether those refugees are part of the survey on social trust. Do we know?
32:40 Speaker 04 They are.
32:41 Stephen J. Dubner? They are.
32:41 Speaker 04 They are. But yeah, now it's refugees from Syria. But when I grew up, it was refugees from Vietnam. Then in the 90s, it was refugees from Bosnia. Then also in the 70s, it was not refugees, but migrant workers from Turkey. So we've had a lot of different waves of migrants. It's an odd and new phenomenon. And I don't see evidence that trust have fallen in the Nordic countries in that time.
33:10 Stephen J. Dubner? I've read and heard from people who move here either as, you know, highly skilled workers or as refugees, that Denmark works great if you're Danish.
33:20 Speaker 04 Yeah.
33:21 Stephen J. Dubner? And that it's much harder. And granted, most countries are this way. But one particular complaint in Scandinavia is that even when you're being treated fairly and given opportunities, economic and educational opportunities and so on, it can be very, very hard to break into the society.
33:35 Speaker 04 Yes, and that's what I hear also from expats living here, from my international friends, that it's very, very difficult to penetrate the social circles in Denmark and Scandinavia. So it takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of time. It's a really, really tight-knit network. And it's also a very small country. And people still live down the block from people they know from they were in kindergarten together.
34:10 Speaker 02 I believe that social, linguistic, ethnic, religious homogeneity probably is conducive to the social democratic model. But I don't believe that diversity is a barrier to it.
34:27 Stephen J. Dubner? The economist Jeff Sachs again. The 2018 edition of the World Happiness Report focused on migration and happiness. One finding, he says, jumped out at his team of researchers.
34:39 Speaker 02 People who move from a poor, unhappy, violence-filled country to a happy Nordic country become like the Nordic citizens in the country. They do carry some of the legacy of the country that they came from. But the adjustment is remarkably fast.
35:02 Stephen J. Dubner? But of course, the adjustment depends on how welcoming a new country is.
35:07 Speaker 02 It matters to go to a country where people are desirous and accepting of in migration. I'm happy to say that despite what might appear to be the case in Trump land right now, Americans rank rather high on acceptability of migrants and still do, and I think that that's a wonderful thing. What I find fascinating about the social democracies, and Denmark is a good example of this, there's a very strong anti-migrant party in Denmark that is also very economically and socially left of center.
35:49 Speaker 02 So it's basically social democracy, but for the Danish people, not for migrants. Whereas in the United States, we tend to think, and in many other countries, we tend to think of anti-immigrant also as being right wing. But Scandinavia has, yeah, we love our social democracy, but it's just for us.
36:16 Speaker 04 It's also important to say here that Denmark, as you've seen, is by no means a utopia.
36:21 Stephen J. Dubner? Mike Viking again.
36:23 Speaker 04 First and foremost, it's important to know that the World Happiness Report, that is based on a national average. So you will have people above that average and below that average.
36:32 Stephen J. Dubner? And the suicide rate here, for instance, is not wildly low. In fact, it's somewhere in the middle, correct?
36:37 Speaker 04 Yeah, you would expect that the happiest countries in the world have a suicide rate of zero.
36:44 Stephen J. Dubner? Although, truthfully, the data show that there is a paradox in that suicide increases with well-being and prosperity.
36:51 Speaker 04 So if you look at the US states, the individual states, the higher level of life satisfaction. The higher level of suicide rates.
37:00 Stephen J. Dubner? The most compelling explanation of suicide I've ever heard about and discussed with the fellow who kind of promulgates it, because we don't really know that much about suicide because it's taboo, the research is very distant and so on, but he calls it the no one left to blame theory.
37:17 Speaker 04 Right.
37:18 Stephen J. Dubner? Which is that if you have problems in life, but you've got a toxic environment or a nasty government, you can always imagine that life will get a lot better. But if you're surrounded by happy shiny people and you're not happy and shiny, it can be. So can you talk about that notion in a place that's so happy?
37:34 Speaker 04 Yeah. So there is a term, the happiness suicide paradox, that talks about exactly that, that it might be more difficult to be unhappy in an otherwise happy society. If everybody around you feels that life is great, that are also happy, and you yourself feel unhappy, then that could create a stronger contrast and maybe you start to blame yourself. And more developed countries have, you know, reduced the reasons why we should be unhappy, have, you know, eliminated poverty, have eliminated, you know, lack of education. Then if I have all these opportunities, why am I still unhappy? We start to internalize that cause and blame ourselves.
38:21 Stephen J. Dubner? Helen Russell, the British expat, has now lived in Denmark for six years. You may recall that she and her husband had been trying unsuccessfully to have children back at home.
38:33 Speaker 01 We had been trying to start a family for years, trying many different types of fertility treatment, but it never quite worked. And the only feedback I kept getting from various medical professionals was, oh, you know, we don't know what it is, but you're quite stressed. And but everyone in London is stressed. It's city life. It's what you do. So you just carry on. Life is busy. We just carry on.
38:52 Stephen J. Dubner? Then you moved to Denmark. I understand now you have not one but three children. So is Denmark also somehow a fertility engine? How did that work?
39:03 Speaker 01 Well, I am now riddled with children. You are quite right. I have a litter. Yeah, I think so. Full disclosure, child number one, little Red. I found out I was pregnant six months after moving here. And so I, he.
39:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, that is a result of being more relaxed and that is an incredible thing. Also, the work-life balance is more conducive to to being relaxed enough to conceive and also to having a family here. Women can have a career and and a family because everything's shared a bit more equally between the sexes and there is this heavily subsidized childcare. I actually had had IVF for my twins who were born last year. But again, that is it's cheaper to have IVF here than it certainly would have been in the UK. And interestingly, Denmark is one of the biggest exporters of of sperm. So there's a lot of genetically Danish babies that'll be coming around the place in the next few years.
40:04 Stephen J. Dubner? This suggests a nice study for some demographer out there to see whether all those genetically Danish babies will go spreading happiness around the globe. In the meantime, Helen Russell has also adapted to the Danish style of parenting.
40:18 Speaker 01 I do leave my children outside to sleep.
40:20 Stephen J. Dubner? Not overnight, presumably.
40:21 Speaker 01 Not overnight, no, no. I mean, I might forget one day, but no, just for nap times. And they do sleep really well because of the fresh air and they're all bundled up in their old fashioned prams, Mary Poppins style.
40:40 Stephen J. Dubner? Coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio.
40:43 Speaker 05 I'm Andrew Yang and I'm running for president as a Democrat in 2020.
40:46 Stephen J. Dubner? Does Andrew Yang have a chance? Probably not. But he does have a vision of how America's economic future might unfold.
40:54 Speaker 05 Fuck this. Let's get 30 guys together with our trucks and our guns and show up and protest the automation of their jobs.
41:04 Stephen J. Dubner? And he has some solutions.
41:06 Speaker 05 Universal basic income, digital social credits, a psychologist in the White House.
41:10 Stephen J. Dubner? A presidential platform that's not like the others. That's next time on Freakonomics Radio.
41:23 Stephen J. Dubner? Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Max Miller and Anders Kelto, with help from Alvin Melathe, and special thanks to Denmark's Radio. Our staff also includes Alison Kreglo, Greg Rippon, Harry Huggins, and Zach Lipinski. Our theme song is "Mr. Fortune" by The Hitchhikers. All the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The entire archive is available on the Stitcher app or at Freakonomics.com, where we also publish transcripts and show notes and much more. If you would like to hear the entire archive ad-free, plus lots of bonus episodes, go to StitcherPremium.com/Freakonomics.
42:06 Stephen J. Dubner? We can also be found on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or via email at [email protected] . Freakonomics Radio also plays on many NPR stations. Check your local station for details. As always, thanks for listening.
42:27 Speaker 03 Stitcher.
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