Pampered or pressured, or both?
If there’s a youth crisis in Denmark, the new government is changing the policies to address it
Everyone agrees that Denmark is a good place to grow up: high quality of life, good social welfare system, good schools, safe streets. But as the new Wellbeing Rankings, which I wrote about last week, show for adults, not everyone here is thriving.
The good news: A new study (DK) by the Economic Council of the Labour Movement shows that the number of children living with a parent on welfare (cash assistance) is at the lowest level in this century. It has fallen by half in the past five years to around 35,000 because many former recipients have gotten a job. According to Lars Andersen, the head of the ECLM, that means fewer live in poverty and more are likely to pursue higher education and obtain employment themselves. But Andersen expects the number to rise again because these parents are likely to be the first to lose their jobs if the economy goes into a recession in 2023.
On the other hand, the number of suicide attempts (DK) by children up to the age of 14 has risen sharply, by around 75 percent in the past three years. The more than 1,400 cases in 2022 make an average of four times per day, with girls accounting for almost seven times as many cases as boys. Rasmus Kejldahl of the Children’s Rights National Association says the main causes are loneliness, social conflicts, and rising mental health diagnoses. He notes that problems that previously affected teenagers are now appearing in 10- to 12-year-olds.
Angst or coddling?
In an interview on DR, the public broadcasting network, psychologist Svend Brinkmann (DK) of Aalborg University discusses reports of increased mental health problems among older teenagers. Brinkmann notes three main causes of dissatisfaction in the survey: the increased pace of education, performance expectations, and a “psychologization” of difficulties. By the latter, he means that young people are more self-conscious of negative feelings and cultivate a psychotherapeutic view of them.
Some 40 percent of young women say they have mental health issues, but Brinkmann thinks they are often part of the ordinary trials of maturing and shouldn’t always be considered medical diagnoses. This is the same kind of malaise found among American teenagers that Jonathan Haidt has been attributing in large part to the rise of social media: Smartphone addiction, social comparison, and sedentary habits worsened by Covid are causing anxiety and depression.
The children’s prime minister
So what does the new government intend to do? In the 2019 election campaign, Mette Frederiksen declared (DK), “If I become prime minister, I will be the children’s prime minister. The greatest unfairness in our society is still that not all children and young people have the same opportunities.” Last month she became prime minister for the second time, with new governing partners. The SVM administration’s plan contains initiatives for young people, but in this area it has gotten criticism for something it’s not doing (DK).
The preceding, Social Democratic government had reached an agreement with its supporting left-wing parties to remove the existing ceiling on cash assistance for families with children. It entailed a supplementary benefit for children and another earmarked for participation in afterschool activities, and it would raise some 9,200 children out of poverty. But the proposal wasn’t submitted to Parliament before the election, and it was apparently vetoed by the Liberal Party (Venstre) in the deal on the new coalition.
“If I become prime minister, I will be the children’s prime minister. The greatest unfairness in our society is still that not all children and young people have the same opportunities.”
—Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen
“They are letting people down in the worst conceivable situation, when all of these families are already hurting in their pocketbooks because prices are rising.”
—Ninna Thomsen, head of Mødrehjælpen
Frederiksen’s former allies call this a serious betrayal. According to Ninna Thomsen, head of Mødrehjælpen, an organization that supports pregnant women and vulnerable families, “They are letting people down in the worst conceivable situation, when all of these families are already hurting in their pocketbooks because prices are rising.” The administration intends to consider the recommendations of a Benefits Commission report from 2021, which include increasing cash assistance to a lesser degree.
Faster treatment and secondary ed reform
The new government has other remedial plans. Widespread staffing shortages in the healthcare system were a leading theme in the election campaign, and Frederiksen has promised to address them. One area singled out for emergency measures is psychiatric treatment for young people, who sometimes face very long waiting lists (DK). It can take up to 38 weeks to get an appointment in the public healthcare system, so many families are now turning to private health insurance for quicker treatment. The PFA insurance company reports that referrals for people under 25 almost tripled from 2020 to 2022.
Frederiksen also emphasized an effort to reduce the number of young people who are neither studying nor employed, about 45,000 (the same number of people the government wants to add to the labor force by 2030). One approach is to increase enrollment in vocational training instead of gymnasium, the college prep program that used to be very selective but now accounts for more than two-thirds of secondary education. The administration will also cancel another controversial plan hatched by the preceding one, to conduct some gymnasium admissions on the basis of the parents’ income (DK). It was intended to reduce economic and ethnic segregation in certain areas, but conservatives saw it as an unwieldy bureaucratic intrusion on free choice.
Speed reading
The administration also has two proposals for higher education: shortening master’s degree programs in the humanities and social sciences from two years to one, and reducing the number of years that students can receive a stipend from six to five (the normal bachelor’s-master’s sequence runs five years). They are intended to get young adults into the labor force more quickly and are estimated to add 11,000 wage earners toward the labor force target (DK). Both measures evoke the ethos of the neoliberal “competition state,” which I also mentioned last week, and they would seem to exacerbate the psychological pressures cited by Brinkmann above.
Proponents argue that Danish students receive more financial aid and complete university on average later than their OECD counterparts. The administration also contends that streamlining the master’s programs will actually improve them, but it seems an arbitrary form of central planning that will be difficult for individual faculties to implement. Both proposals have predictably met resistance from student and university organizations.
Right swerve
As with the abolition of Great Prayer Day and the shortening of the early retirement program, the Social Democrats are testing their constituents’ tolerance for their rightward drift into technocratic reforms. While Lars Løkke Rasmussen of the Moderates appears to have brokered a deal to liberate Frederiksen from the left wing, as Foreign Minister he’ll be abroad most of the year and won’t have to worry about the execution of the program.