How far back in history do you have to go to get to a time when the Nordic countries weren't the countries with the highest standard of living? The 19th century?? The 18th century??

What countries historically had the highest standards of living in Europe?

(I understand that standard of living is not necessarily a simple thing to quantify, but I think its generally agreed that Nordic countries come out top on many metrics. I mean factors like Life expectancy, low rates of poverty and hunger, low rates of crime).


10 comments

  1. Not so very far. I was in Norway and before the discovery of all the natural riches Norway was pretty poor.

  3. Before finding oil (60s?) I don’t think Norway had a better living standard than other western european countries. Unsure about our neighbors.

  4. I’d offer before North Sea oil, Norway wasn’t really developed. 20th C.

    Sweden has a scientific history and a colonial past. 19th C.

    Finland… well until Nokia… 20th C

    Denmark… well they do have Tivoli and their ancestors invaded my country. 19th C

    Source: UK perspective

  5. The current standard of living (not just “being rich”, but also things like the welfare system or generally strong unions and the resulting working conditions) is largely a result of the living conditions being really fucking shit and people fighting hard to improve them.

    Edit: Sweden specifically has a marked improvement in quality of life for the lower classes from the 30s and onwards, following some pretty turbulent events and a very strong labour rights movement early on in the decade and the subsequent election (and the many following reelections) of the social democrats. Another major jump in living quality was connected to miljonprogrammet in the 60s, during which a lot of people moved to newly built apartments/house and had things like warm water and flushing toilets for the first time in their life.

  6. Norway was really poor and underdeveloped before they found oil in the North Sea. It’s not really that long ago. Denmark wasn’t anything to speak of either before the industrial revolution.

  7. They only started dominating those charts from the 1970s or so and onwards. Before that, the USA was the place to be, maybe also Switzerland

  8. I would say the Low countries (Belgium and the Netherlands) had one of the highest standard of living historically. The UK also, especially after the industrial revolution.

    Edit: typo

  9. 60 years. It’s 60 years since Norway and Sweden began their path to be at our standards.

    130 years for Denmark and Iceland. We began the process the moment we became a democratcy and even though it came slowly and Iceland split starting their own process. It has still been going on since around 1888.

    I’d say we all reached it in the 80’s.

  10. For understanding  the danish welfare system, Read about Stauning(first social democrat prime minister), i call him the father of the nation. Workers super chad

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