Recently, President Donald Trump allegedly voiced his desire for “more people from places like Norway” to immigrate to the US.

That’s just not going to happen.

Last year, I advised 24 law students studying the law and culture of Norway. During spring break, we traveled to Tromso and Oslo, Norway, to interview lawyers, nongovernmental organizations and businesspeople about a variety of the country’s legal issues. Based on our visit, here’s why the president is wrongheaded in thinking that hordes of Norwegians want to immigrate to America.

1. In Norway, it pays to parent

As we made our way through Oslo to conduct interviews, we observed a number of men with baby strollers -- without women accompanying them. It was visual evidence of Norway’s generous parental leave policies. Both parents receive a two-week post-birth leave, then split either a 46-week fully paid leave or a 56-week leave paid at 80 percent of their salary. 

If fathers don’t take 10 weeks off, the whole family loses those 10 weeks of leave -- which explains the solo dads. Accordingly, 90 percent of Norwegian fathers take at least 12 weeks off work to spend with their newborns.

By contrast, according to the 2016 National Compensation Survey, conducted annually by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 14 percent of private-sector workers in the US have some form of paid family leave -- the rest must take unpaid leave to care for their newborns.

2. Women are better represented on Norwegian boards

Norway requires 40 percent representation for both men and women on the boards of directors of public limited liability companies. From the time Norway’s Parliament passed the law in 2003 -- the idea gained traction when the conservative minister of trade complained publicly that he was tired of seeing the same men at business meetings -- to 2016, the median percentage of women sitting on boards of directors rose to 42 percent from zero.

My students interviewed a “golden skirt,” who reported that Norwegian women still face challenges in rising through the corporate ranks because of a lack of institutional female leadership in Norwegian corporations. According to a 2014 gender equity study by consulting firm McKinsey & Co., boards with more gender diversity financially outperform those with fewer women by about 15 percent.

In the US, women held only about 20 percent of board seats at S&P 500 companies in 2015, and 20 percent of board seats at Fortune 500 companies in 2016.

3. Norway is less corrupt

Norway is one of the least corrupt nations in the world. In fact, the students had difficulty finding examples of any corruption -- the biggest complaint among our interviewees was that there weren’t enough laws to deal with corruption in the event it exists. Global corruption watchdog Transparency International ranked Norway the sixth-cleanest country out of the 176 studied in 2016, with a score of 85. The US was No. 18, with a score of 74.

Corruption costs us money, according to the Australia Institute. Its study found that each point a nation loses in the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index corresponds with a $486 per capita fall in gross domestic product. And we may be on course for a big drop in score for 2017 -- 44 percent of Americans believe corruption is pervasive in the White House (as opposed to 36 percent in 2016).

4. The benefits are better too

According to the World Health Organization’s “World Health Report 2000,” Norway’s overall health system performance ranked No. 11 out of 191 countries. Under Norway’s universal health care system, personal medical expenses are capped at about $1,817, so that no person pays more than that in medical care in a given year.

Higher education is also free in Norway, as there are no tuition fees for students, even if they are not Norwegian citizens. When we visited Tromso -- home to the northernmost university on the planet -- my students befriended an Italian graduate student taking advantage of Norway’s benefits.

And the Government Pension Fund of Norway, which is financed by the country’s oil profits and will provide for future generations of Norwegians, is currently worth more than $1 trillion (about $190,000 per Norwegian citizen).

Many of these perks of Norwegian life come with a cost: Norwegians pay more in taxes than most Americans, yet this doesn’t seem to bother them. According to the World Happiness Report 2017, Norwegians are the happiest people in the world.


By Dana Hill

Dana Hill is a clinical associate professor of law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. She wrote this for the Chicago Tribune. -- Ed.


(Tribune Content Agency)