Selected countries

Sweden is a Scandinavian country of just over 10 million inhabitants, where forests cover nearly 70% of the land and lakes and islands are everywhere. Living alone is remarkably common here: single-person households without children are the dominant living arrangement. Perhaps not unrelated, Swedes are among the Europeans most likely to say that friends are very important in their lives (63%), second only to Northern Ireland.

The country is highly diverse, with around one in five residents born abroad. While most people formally belong to the Church of Sweden, only about 10% consider religion very important in their lives. Sweden has a strong welfare state and a strong democracy and the Swedes are among the happiest people of the world. Sweden also consistently ranks among the countries with the highest levels of interpersonal trust worldwide.

The social cohesion of this Mediterranean country, with about 47 million inhabitants, was investigated by the team in an earlier project, the BRIDGES project, and will be a referent for this project. 

Europe's most densely populated country has approximately 17.1 million inhabitants, and on average, they are the tallest in the world. About 26% of the territory is below sea level and the area is rather flat. Cycling is so embedded that Dutch traffic law often implicitly assigns responsibility to motorists rather than cyclists in accidents. Despite very low current levels of religiosity, Dutch society was historically organised into religious and ideological “pillars,” which has left long‑lasting footprints on society. 16% of the population was born abroad. Coalition governments are the norm. The Netherlands is relatively little family-focused, with only 77% saying family is very important.

This country, by the Baltic sea, has approximately 38 million inhabitants. Poland has a low share of immigrants (4,5%), but it currently houses over a million Ukrainian refugees. The vast majority of the Polish are Catholic, and as much as 64% attends religious services frequently. Polish society is strongly family-centered, but like most countries, people feel that family ties have weakened over the last two decades. Social trust in Poland is much lower than in Sweden, with only 24% agreeing that most people can be trusted. Only 78% say they feel close to at least one person and donating to charity is low. Politically, it is the most polarized country in Europe. 

Hungary, one of the oldest continuously existing states in Europe, has 9,7 million inhabitants.