The 1945 final report of the Danish Ernarings- og Husholdningsnavne (ehn; nutrition and housekeeping board) resounds with both relief and bewilderment. Public health had suffered significantly during the First World War, in which Denmark had been neutral. The Second World War, by which Denmark seemed more profoundly affected, had turned out not to have had such disastrous consequences. This was a welcome but unexpected outcome: the EHN had been set up in 1939 to monitor the expected decline in Danish health, and its members were understandably surprised when this deterioration did not take place. After five years of intense monitoring of the Danish population – during which the board's members had investigated diets, body weight, eyesight, dental status and many other aspects of health – the board's final conclusion was that the health of the Danish population had mostly improved during the years of the occupation.

The Dutch had been less lucky. Compared to Denmark, where the expected increase in infectious disease mortality remained so conspicuously absent, during the war the Dutch suffered significantly increased mortality rates. Unsurprisingly, the ‘Hunger winter’ of 1944-45 stands out as a particularly deadly period, but even before that disastrous episode the number of deaths per thousand inhabitants increased considerably. This divergence indicates that there was a marked difference in the material circumstances of life in the two countries, but what this difference was is not immediately evident. Something went wrong in the Netherlands (as indeed it did in most of wartime Europe) that did not go wrong in Denmark. It caused mortality in the Netherlands to increase, while living standards in Denmark were sufficiently favourable to avoid such a development.

Although the interplay between economic circumstances and human longevity is still in many respects a mystery, mortality can be used as an indicator of the quality of life.