General Socio-Economic Profile

Denmark’s economy relies heavily on human resources, but not exclusively. There are a few significant and valuable natural resources available, including mature oil and gas wells in the North Sea. According to a passage found in The Northern Countries in World Economy, “Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden Denmark's main exports are: industrial production/manufactured goods 73.3% (of which machinery and instruments were 21.4%, and fuels, chemicals, etc. 26%); agricultural products and others for consumption 18.7% (Delegationerne for nordisk økonomisk samarbejde, The Northern Countries in World Economy).” Denmark is a net exporter of food and energy and has since the 1990s had a balance of payments surplus. “The accumulated value of service and merchandise exports in 2015 amounted to 54% of GDP, and imports in 2015 amounted to 49% of GDP (Campbell, Institutional competitiveness in the global economy: Denmark, the United States, and the varieties of capitalism).” Notable among the service exports are container shipping. There is no net foreign debt as other countries owe more money to Denmark than Denmark owes to them, but because of large deficits due to increased unemployment levels the central government has increased its debt level since the end of September 2008.
According to 2012 figures from Statistics Denmark, 89.6% of Denmark’s population of over 5,580,516 was of Danish descent, defined as having at least one parent who was born in Denmark and has Danish citizenship. Many of the remaining 10.4% were immigrants—or descendants of recent immigrants (defined as people born in Denmark from migrant parents, or parents without Danish citizenship) —less than a third of whom are from the neighbouring Scandinavian countries and Germany. Over two-thirds include people from Turkey, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Asia, and from Western Asia. More than 590 000 individuals (10.4%) are migrants and their descendants (142 000 second generation migrants born in Denmark). Of these 590,000 immigrants and their descendants: 200,000 (34%) have a Western background (Norway, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, UK, Poland and Iceland).
The inflation rate has decreased in Denmark since 2015. Prices of clothing and footwear decreased 4.1 percent, transport went down 2.3 percent, health fell 0.9 percent, food and non-alcoholic beverages prices declined 0.7 percent and cost of alcoholic beverages