ABSTRACT
Denmark’s population of just over 5 million has been growing very slowly over the last generation and is expected to decline slightly after the turn of the century. Denmark’s birth-rate since 1981 has been below the replacement level, giving her a small proportion of young people and many small households. Denmark has a large stock of old flats – over three-quarters of a million – from before the Second World War, most of which are private. It has a further 400,000 flats owned by non-profit housing companies, mostly built since the war. Because Danish urban growth and industrialisation were so gradual and because her farming was so prosperous, Denmark experienced many fewer social problems, pressures and upheavals than France, Germany or Britain in the late nineteenth century. In 1933, during the world recession, unemployment in Denmark rose to a staggering 44 per cent.
