Behind the open sea somewhere there is the land

of my dreams: happiness among immigrants in Europe

Olli KangasResearch Director, Social Insurance Institution of

FinlandProfessor, Department of Political Science,

University of Southern Denmark

WHY HAPPINESS AND IMMIGRANTS• The allusions in the title fits very well to my

position as a H. C. Andersen Professor in the happy country of Denmark

• Klaus Petersen, my Danish colleague, once asked me whether a Finn becomes more happy when s/he moves to Denmark -- the country often depicted to be the happiest country in the world.

• The study is a humble attempt to answer Klaus’ inquiry.

Contents• Why life-satisfaction and happiness?• Data• Happy immigrants live in happy

countries• Welfare state regime matters• What is the new Sampo• Conclusion: A personal statement

Two traditions of welfare research• Objective measures– Resources: GDP, income, poverty, level of education,

employment etc.matter– No interest in feelings– E.g. The Swedish level of living surveys• Resurces: money, education, employment, family etc…

• Subjective measures– Interest in end-status; feelings matter– Finnish Erik Allardt’s having, loving and being– EU statistics provide more and more data on

subjective welfare– Happiness is cool even for the hard-boiled economists

Happiness – a real thing?• Some argue that happiness is not a real thing

and not a proper object for scientific inquiry

• Psychologists, armed with fancy brain probing devices, argue that happiness is electric activity in the frontal part of the brains

• From the social science point of view: – which kind of social phenomena cause positive

electric waves in our brains

In Kalevela, the Finnish national epos...• There is a story

about the SAMPO• a happiness and

wealth generating magical device

• Made by the black-smith Ilmarinen– Painting by Akseli

Gallen-Kallela, 1893

But, as usually• a fight about the ownership of such a useful device immediately began

• in the following fight the Sampo, unluckily enough, was lost to the sea bottom

•never has it been found again

Akseli Gallen-Kallela 1896

Therefore...• There is a constant seek after compensatory

measures for Sampo- at home and more and more abroad

• In this presentation I will look at some of those measures that contribute to happiness and life satisfaction among immigants in Europe:

– The regimes of happiness among the European countries in the 2000s

– Who is happy and who is less happy?– How can we explain happiness?– Which factors contribute to happiness in Europe?

Data• European Social Survey (ESS) • Since 2002 the ESS has been carried out at

two-year intervals – http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org

• The latest year of observation used in this study was 2010.

• The size of the cross-sectional data varies from the low 579 in Iceland (2004) to the sample size of 3 032 in Germany in 2010.

• In the individual waves, the number of immigrants in most countries is too low for reliable statistical analyses.

• Data for different years are pooled– 17 837 observations on immigrants in 28 countries. – The smallest sample is from Bulgaria• 50 observations

– the largest one, the Swiss sample, contains 1 886 immigrants

• Immigrant status is attached to each respondent born outside the country of residence

Furthermore• Countries collapsed into welfare regimes• Nordic– Den, Fin, Nor, Swe

• Central European– Aut, Bel, Fra, Ger, Lux, Nl, Swi

• Anglo-American– Ire, UK

• Southern European– Cyp, Gre, Ita, Por, Spa

• Post-socialst– Bul, Cro, Cze, Est, Hun, Lat, Pol, Rus, Slove, Sla, Ukr

Happiness & life-satisfaction• two indicators for subjective well-being in

the ESS. • a) Happiness: “How happy are you?” • b) Life satisfaction: “How satisfied you are

with your life as a whole?”–The respondents could express their

happiness on a continuous scale that runs from 0 ‘extremely unhappy’ to 10 ‘extremely happy’. –Here subjective well-being = (a+b)/2

Strong correlation between life-satisfaction and happiness

• To gain a more robust measure for subjective well-being, the two variables were merged

• (happiness + life satisfaction)/2. – 0 = very unhappy– 10 = very happy

Unstandardized OLS regression coefficients

Constant 8,247***

Gender 0,096**

Age -0,038***

Age squared/1000 0,402***

Economic difficulties -1,001***

Income Quartile 0,050***

Bad health -0,684***

Unemployed -0,402***

No friends -0,533***

Feeling unsafe -0,092**

Discrimination -0,317***

Trust in people 0,306***

Trust in institutions 0,381***

Adj. R squared 0,305

Happiness, gender, regime of birth and the regime of residence

Inequalities and happiness

Money and happiness• - some correlation

between GDP per capita and happiness

• - but huge differences between countries at the same prosperity level (eg EST vs. CYP)

• - Money matters but institutions rule

Ingredients for the new Sampo???

Is everybody the black-smith of his/her own happiness?

• What are the elements of Ilmarinen’s modern SAMPO? – Equal society for all– High (inter-generational)

income mobility– Low level of poverty– Adequate safety net in all

respects– Non-corrupt institutions ->– High level of trust

• Macro level characteristics explain more than individual level variables

Happiness in Denmark

Post-Soc South Anglo Conti Nordic Other6.00

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HAP

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WOMEN MOVED TO DENMARK

WOMEN LIVING IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY

MEN MOVED TO DENMARK

MEN LIVING IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY

Land of fairy tales: to be an immigrant and happy

“Behind the open sea, somewhere thereis the Land of my dreams,But without wings I can't flyand prisoner I'm of the groundBut in my dreams,Which fly so highI walk there every night…”– Unto Mononen’s tango ”The land of my dreams” (1956)