Or maybe it's the very high resource/population ratio?
The petroleum sector accounts for 40% of Norway's exports.
Fishing is 10% (!) of Norwegian exports.
Both of these things have an incredibly high extraction efficiency in the modern era. It would be nice to believe it's the social safety net, but I don't think that hypothesis is backed up with much evidence. The much more obvious reason is staring Scandinavia in the face. I'm intrigued to see how Norway does when the rest of the world stops using petroleum and goes vegan.
Sweden, without oil and without much fishing, is also doing really well per-capita etc.
On the ground, the welfare state approach seems the plausible explanation.
And how will Norway do post-oil? Really rather well, it seems, because of its sovereign wealth approach which contrasts strongly with eg the Texas approach.
The petroleum sector accounts for 40% of Norway's exports.
Fishing is 10% (!) of Norwegian exports.
Both of these things have an incredibly high extraction efficiency in the modern era. It would be nice to believe it's the social safety net, but I don't think that hypothesis is backed up with much evidence. The much more obvious reason is staring Scandinavia in the face. I'm intrigued to see how Norway does when the rest of the world stops using petroleum and goes vegan.