25 MARTINDALE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE trust societies, cognitive and emotional resources can be better spent elsewhere, directed at other parts of their lives, such as families and careers. Costs Aside from its great benefits to Denmark, scholars have identified costs associated with Danes’ high levels of social trust. For example, the highest levels of undeclared work, or informal work, in Europe are found in Denmark (Special Eurobarometer 284, 2007). Undeclared work refers to employment that is not disclosed to the government. A 2010 survey of at least 2000 Danes revealed that more than half of them had paid for undeclared work within the past year (52%) and over one-quarter of them (28%) would do so if they had the chance (Rockwool Foundation, 2010). Research has shown that the patronage and approval of undeclared work in Denmark are significantly associated with Danes’ high levels of social trust (Sørensen, 2011). This association was found even after controlling for political orientation and institutional trust for Danish parliamentary, public, and legal systems. Researchers have theorized that this relationship between social trust and high levels of undeclared work can be explained by the fact that such work involves social cooperation: it requires an informal agreement of individuals to buy and sell labor without disclosure to the government. Undeclared work, in 2009, was estimated to account for almost 3% of Denmark’s GDP (€6.2B) (Hvidtfeldt et al., 2010). Although this percentage may seem trivial, undeclared work is a particular harm in Denmark, given its extensive welfare state. Undeclared work diminishes tax revenues earned by the government, and high tax revenues are a necessity to fund Denmark’s expansive, and increasingly expensive, welfare state, which covers broad sectors of society, including health care and education. (For further information on Denmark’s welfare costs, see Duffany’s article on health care and Erdman’s article on education in this volume.) Social trust can contribute to a stressful workplace where trust must be constantly maintained. Researchers have argued that there is often a deep sense of obligation felt by workers to reciprocate trust from supervisors through overworking, in order to prove they are worthy of such trust (Knorr, 2018). Most importantly, trust can be the basis of excluding others, particularly minorities, in the workplace. For example, Denmark’s white and Christian identity can be a basis of trust in the workplace, creating a corporate culture in which trust between ethnic Danes is taken for granted, leading to the exclusion of minorities who do not look or behave like ethnic Danes. In one Danish company, data show that over 90% of employees from minority backgrounds were not promoted from their positions despite having the necessary educational and competency requirements. Such exclusion was associated with lower levels of motivation and commitment to the company from minorities, with many of them even leaving the company (Knorr, 2018). Indeed, a global survey of expatriate life has shown that Denmark is one of the toughest countries for expatriates to settle into, which may be attributed to tight-knit social networks based on high levels of interpersonal trust (InterNations, 2022). Generally, immigrants are defined as people who move to another country to live there permanently, whereas expatriates are people who move to another country for a limited or undecided amount of time. Denmark has ranked in the bottom 10 in the Ease of Settling in Index since 2014. This ranking is based on a variety of factors, including how friendly and at home expatriates feel in their nonnative country. Expatriates in Denmark have the hardest time finding friends, one of the most consistent and important predictors of happiness (Saphiré-Bernstein & Taylor, 2012; Malvaso & Kang, 2022). The index showed that 66% of expatriates find it hard to make local friends, which is 30 percentage points above the global average. In terms of friendliness, only 46% of expatriates find the population to be friendly, which is 23 percentage points below the global average. Most expatriates indicate that they do not feel at home or have difficulty becoming accustomed to the local culture. Denmark is a small, tightly connected society, one that makes it harder for expatriates to find access to the social benefits Denmark boasts. Institutional trust: The case of media Beyond social trust, Danes have very high levels of trust in their media institutions. Denmark has two highly trusted public television stations, DR and TV 2, which are trusted by 80% and 78% of the population, respectively (Schrøder et al., 2022). They also have multiple national newspapers, with the largest Politiken, a political print newspaper. Most Danes trust Politiken (70%), and even more (76%) say that the news media adequately reports on important events (Harrie, 2018). Approximately 70% of Danes believe that the media do a good job at being politically neutral and at investigating their government. Overall, 58% of Danes trust their media, a stark contrast to the skepticism in the United States, where only 36% of Americans trust the news media (Brenan, 2021).
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