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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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 againAkseli Gallen-Kallela 1896
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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?
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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.
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• 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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Happiness, gender, regime of birth and the regime of residence
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Inequalities and happiness
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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
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Ingredients for the new Sampo???
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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
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Happiness in Denmark
Post-Soc South Anglo Conti Nordic Other6.00
6.50
7.00
7.50
8.00
8.50
9.00
HAPP
INES
S
WOMEN MOVED TO DENMARK
WOMEN LIVING IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY
MEN MOVED TO DENMARK
MEN LIVING IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY
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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)