Last night, 60 minutes ran a story suggesting that Denmark was the happiest nation on earth. The secret is allegedly having low expectations. From the transcript posted over at NewsBusters:

SAFER: After careful study, Dr. Christiansen thinks he isolated the key to Danish anti-depression.

CHRISTIANSEN: What we basically figured out that, although the Danes were very happy with their life, when we looked at their expectations, they were pretty modest.

SAFER: So, by having low expectations, you're rarely disappointed.

CHRISTIANSEN: Exactly.

SAFER: Dr. Christiansen's study was called 'Why Danes are Smug.' And, essentially, his answer was it's because they're so glum, and get happy when things turn out not quite so badly as they expected.

This sounds like a bit of insight, but, when you dig deeper, it turns out it's really a bit of circular thinking. I tracked down the happiness scale the University of Leicester was using, called the SWLS ("Satisifaction with Life Scale") and it's not so much a measure of happiness as of expectations being met. So the "secret" to doing well on it, of course, is simply to have low-but-reasonable expectations for what your "ideal" life conditions should be. You don't have to travel to Denmark to figure that out -- just read the questions!

The questions compare someone's life to their picture of "ideal" -- so nations with relatively little political rhetoric about "haves and have-nots" will score better than nations where people are always concerned someone is doing better than they are. But is that really the same thing as happiness?

I would argue, for example, that many people here would view the life of a wealthy individual as "ideal". But are they really that much unhappier the rest of the time, when not being asked that specific question? And is the wealthy individual really happier because they do live the life many would think of as ideal? Studies seem to show that people who are wealthy tend to be unhappy.

60 Minutes implies that socialism may have a lot to do with Denmark's happiness:

All education is free in Denmark, right on through university. And students can take as long as they like to complete their studies.

"And we get paid to go to school actually. Instead of in the U.S. you pay to go to school, we get paid to go to school if we pass our exams," a student explains.

"Americans watching this particularly people your age would be bowled over by the very idea that the government pays you to go to school," Safer remarks.

"Yeah," the student acknowledges.

"I'm being paid right now for not going to school. I'm being paid for parenting," another male student tells Safer. "It's 100 percent paid for by the government for half a year."

(By the way, I have a Danish cousin who's been going to university for almost two decades now. It's her way of earning a living.)

Denmark also provides free health care, subsidized child care and elder care, a social safety net spread the length and breadth of the country.

"I mean, we're pretty much free to do whatever we want. We're secure from the day we're born. For a Dane who lives in Denmark," a male tells Safer.

Fish and beer-a-holics they may be, but workaholics they are not: Dr. Christensen says the average work week is 37 hours, and workers get six weeks of vacation.

But in getting all of these wonderful gifts from the government, the Danes do pay a price. Christensen says a middle income person would pay about 50 percent - half - in taxes....

Yet there are some puzzles here.

If you look at the detailed results (scroll down) you'll noticed that the USA and Norway have the same score, despite the fact that Norway has far more socialism than the US -- and the USA comes in well ahead of the UK, Spain, Germany, France -- all of which have smaller work weeks, free student education, and many of the other socialist programs associated with Denmark.

Another point: an index I believe must correlate with true societal happiness is the suicide rate -- based on my revolutionary theory that if you intentionally killed yourself, you couldn't have been that happy with your life. Yet looking here, you'll notice that many of the nations which are allegedly "happier" (reporting less difference from their ideal, really) also, strangely, have higher suicide rates than the US: Canada, Denmark, and particularly Finland.

How satisfied can you be if your nation has one of the highest rates of suicide in the world? Perhaps you've reached your "ideal", but maybe you don't think much of that ideal?

As the 60 Minutes coverage admits (sometimes inadvertently), there are a lot of factors involved here. 60 Minutes notes, in passing that "Denmark is almost totally homogeneous" -- so we don't know how much happiness is linked to the many different cultures and backgrounds we have in the US or Canada. Likewise, happiness researchers caution that in some cultures it is considered taboo to admit you're not doing well. Is Denmark such a place or not? It would be nice if someone would track how many survey participants -- at what scores -- later committed suicide, just to find out how satisfied those people had reported feeling. Or take people being treated for depression in different nations and see how highly they mark their scores as a baseline.

It's nice to know the Danes think their lives are close to ideal. But I don't know how much I personally like the notion of an ideal life as getting by yet doing as little as possible. Is it better to aim high and fall short, or to aim lower and hit the bullseye?

Asked what he would advise Americans to do, the man said, "Well, okay. I have an advice. Don't depend too much on the American dream. Yeah. I think you might get disappointed."

Almost certainly. But perhaps the Danes who felt otherwise -- like my grandfather, perhaps -- tended to leave and end up here.