- Cities have higher salaries and education and lower unemployment rates
- But they are eight times less joyful than their small-town counterparts
- The Canadian researchers say it lays bare the importance of communities over isolation
People who live in rural areas are happier than city dwellers, new research has found.
The study surveyed 400,000 people across Canada using a widely-recognized happiness scale.
Cities have higher salaries, higher education levels and lower unemployment rates.
However, that meant nothing in terms of joy: people who lived in the countryside were, on average, eight times happier than people in urban areas, the study found.
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The researchers said the findings lay bare the undeniable importance of strong communities over social isolation.
Cities have higher salaries and education and lower unemployment rates but their inhabitants are far less joyful than people in less populated areas
‘Life is significantly less happy in urban areas,’ the study’s authors concluded.
To assess happiness, researchers at McGill University in Montreal and the Vancouver School of Economics asked people how satisfied they were with their lives on a scale of one to 10.
They then broke this down into various questions that contributed to the same point.
In general, most landed between 7.04 and 8.94; just five percent fell below a rating of five out of 10.
Given the small average range, the study authors said, even one fraction difference was statistically significant.
They found that people in cities were 800 percent less happy than those in small towns or rural areas.
The reasons for this, the authors said, are many, but is mainly driven by the lack of a strong community base.
Scores of studies have shown, city-dwellers tend not to have as much regular contact with family or friends.
And, as a study found this week, social isolation can literally change the brain, flooding the brain with a chemical that fuels fear and aggression.
City-dwellers also tend to spend more of their income – at least 30 percent – on their housing, which is a stressor.
One Toronto therapist, who spoke with Canada’s Global News, also said people in urban areas tend to feel less safe, even subconsciously.
‘There isn’t the same feeling of safety,’ Lesli Musicar said.
‘People are generally less trusting.
‘There’s a heterogeneous population, it’s not a homogeneous population, it’s not like in a small town where there is a lot more commonality.’
I can agree with all the above. As for me,I love the country and I do not like big citys.
People living in the cities are not interested in joyful living. They are interested in the action and opportunities urban areas bring. Why do you think most young people leave the rural areas and move to the urban areas that are booming and vibrant?
My youngest daughter was raised on a small pacific island in Micronesia then her teen years on the big island of Hawaii. She now lives in New York City and loves it. A real example of a coconut girl in a high fashion world.
This study is bunk. Would be interested in who they talked to. Do you think the rural areas are vacant and decaying for nothing? There is no real culture there for the young people.
Just look at the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. There is so much going on there it boggles the mind.
What is important is the economy. No economy, no happiness. It is a self evident fact.
That’s a great post, Thunderbird. I don’t know why you’re catching downvotes. People on the farm could be happier in a meth and farm animal kind of way, but if you’re young and want a social life, or opportunity, you would be bored to tears and basically out of luck.
I agree Thunderbird. It’s some sort of fallacy. Many of these rural towns have no economy. Talented, educated people need to leave, if they are going to use their skills, and make a decent amount of money. I can attest that the rural towns of Western Pennsylvania (where my wife is from) are a pathetic shit-show. Many of them had one industry – that has long ago left.
What do these people in rural towns do? Small time farming? Here in Minnesota, many small towns are packed with immigrants / illegals – turkey / meat processing plants. They hear housing is cheap, and invade the town – overnight.
For those of us who grew up in rural America, it comes as not shock. Especially when you are raised on a farm. By it’s very isolation you are forced to reflect on what it means to be you and you are more apt to find out who you really are by a younger age.
I see young kids in high school today who are such drama queens who are flitting and flying from one fancy to another. I work with youth and I find it…challenging to say the least. It was really better when I grew up. The only thing we had to worry about was whether we were going to end up in Vietnam or not.
so what accounts for rins,isn’t he in a small town?
Hey I heard that.. My question after reading this is how do they measure it. Happiness that is..
Around everyone is complaining these days that they have to pay $6.50/lb for Lobsters. The horror! I can get them cheaper. Just go out and put in day working on the water and get them for free.
But yeah Life is better here than in city. Lots to do and things can be done less expensively. My wife and I held soiree last evening and invited six friends for Lobster. I even grilled some Top sirloin. There was so much lobster that folks skipped on the turf and could not finish all the bugs.
Anyways never had much interest in living in urban areas. Better here. Good food is fresh and the friends are better…
You should come up sometime Tampa. Bring nkit, Stucky, The Coyote and anyone else for a feed. It would be fun. Bring a guitar and we can all sing songs around the campfire on shore by the sea.
But watch out for Bears on the road getting here…
So odd that most people love those salt water cockroachs but get sick at seeing a roach on the countertop. Goes for me also.
I bailed in ’04 for the rural life when an opportunity presented itself. Things are quite different now and it took some time to assimilate. One day, I’d decided that if I wanted “vibrancy” I would get in the car and drive there.
I’d had enough diversity and excitement and was looking for boredom and mediocrity.
The evaluation of what makes one happy, often comes with a drastic change in one’s environment.
Every once in a while I’ll take one of the kids into the city for the day and let them get a good dose of what it has to offer. I make sure that for every museum or restaurant we go to we drive through one of the slums. I point out how people have learned to walk past human beings sleeping on cardboard on the sidewalk as if they were nothing more than a bag of garbage. They see how much money it costs to do something as simple as park your car or buy a drink. I ask them how much exhaust fumes, human waste, garbage and waste they think is produced in an area not much larger than our farm and the impact that has on the environment.
I’ve lived and worked in cities and I know the cost people bear in having to inhabit an environment where there is so much human contact that the only way to survive is to ignore 99% of the population, and that every morsel of food consumed has to be brought in from the outside. There exists an illusion that cities are somehow self-sufficient unto themselves but nothing could be further from the truth. They are parasitical in nature and they deplete the best parts of the human population in their self-centered need to dominate and control the rest of the world. The people who live there fancy themselves as open and liberal but the most provincial and narrow minded bigots I have ever encountered are almost exclusively city dwellers locked in their parochial worldview, completely dependent upon the production and efforts of the rural population.
Urbanized living is one of the greatest flaws of our civilization and for whatever it produces in terms of economic benefit it causes tenfold the human misery and despair and waste.
Hardscrabble, when I was college-age the idea of living rural didn’t appeal to me at all. There was too much opportunity and excitement in the cities. that sense of glamour and adrenaline has been quietly replaced with a new population that exist solely on government benefits and a minder class that exists to take care of their needs, for a price. I live in a very urban setting now. It’s not glamorous, it’s not exciting. It’s dirty, it’s dangerous. And the only real opportunities are as agents of corporate America or as a minder for the minority underclass. It’s a mess. The cities have been ruined. Probably all of them. The only question now is, what are we going to do with these people when the free money dries up? To paraphrase one of your past musings, they’re going to need to learn the business end of a shovel or a frying pan real fast.
@hardscrabble. I would upvote that comment 100X if possible
I went into NYC in 9/’97 to re-enlist a sailor in the head of the statue of Liberty before it opened to public. Moving ceremony as her mom was from USSR and was present. In uniform we got free ride up to observation deck in twin tower. But Manhattan was a shithole with street people crapping and shooting up on streets.
I lived in Mesquite, NV as a kid, when it said “Welcome to…” on both sides of the same sign.
Moved to Las Vegas, NV and watched the valley grow from 60,000 to over 1.5 million.
It went from a cowboy town with a small dose of the mob to an urban cesspool 30 miles square.
It was first taken over by the beancounters. Then assholes from CA, NY, and NJ moved to LV and voted to make it just like the shit-holes they left behind.
Now?
I’m happy to be in a zip code with less than 150 people and the nearest town of 10,000 45 miles away.
just out of curiosity, say I am happy. Just how can you measure that and come up with the fact it is possible to be 8 times happier than that? I am calling bullshit. These type of measurements are not possible.
That said, rural communities seem far better for older folks, not so much for younger.
Why is it that cities draw the youths like a moth to the flame?
Used to be small, nearly self-sufficient towns all over tis country, enough work to go around, where everybody knew everybody.
Is it when Walmarts were airdropped into these areas and put the mom-and-pops under with disposable shit made in China that things went tits-up?
Is it when “free trade” opened the Chinese shit to run rampant?
Or was it before?
Lack of parental oversight/diminished accountability for actions/access to a variety of sex partners/saturation media marketing that promotes urban life.
Other than that I can’t think of anything else.
The local Barred Owls are smart…just sayin’…Fuck Mexicans..import more Barred Owls…
MN, actually, you nail it. When Clinton sign NAFTA, and then China was allowed to join the WTO and was given most favored nation trading status, that’s the moments a large part of America went belly up.
it was happening long b4 nafta ,guys–
the mechanization and then industrial scale farming caused massive job loss,both direct & indirect–
Interesting the down votes to my prior post. Island life is also rural life and economies come and go like the trade winds. When the economy is up life is a dream but when the economy is down it can get boring as hell.
Many of the young people growing up in the pacific islands including Hawaii come to the mainland because of opportunity and a wider range of activities. I know it has been the same in small rural towns on the mainland.
It is no accident that main street in most small towns is dead. The present generation is so different than the old one. Only the old like the rural life. Some young like it but they are few in number.
In my old age I happen to like the urban life. Spent half my life in rural settings and liked it because I could travel.
I like the active life and want to enjoy it before the coming crash. Yes people can and do find joy in urban america. The study is bunk.
Have any of you studied systematics? Science uses it to understand biology and all the sciences concerning nature, social, and financial structures.
What I understand of it relating to the structure of the United States and it’s multi-system foundations is showing me serious stress is occurring in the systems that is leading to a breakdown of the total structure of the US in the near future. This breakdown will occur all the way down to the local governments and their social support systems. Our problems are to big and complicated to solve with the existing networks.
While we have focused our energies on making money we have neglected our responsibility of seeing to it that good & decent people are running the government at all levels. So we have brought these massive problems on our selves. It is not that we have not been warned but rather that we chose not to listen, become informed and do something about it. Oh we blame the media but all we have to do is look around us and see the cracks and bad judgments of our elected officials. When politicians run for office why do we elect them when all they do is put down their opponents and offer no vision of the future. They make statements of doing something without any supporting data as to how they plan to do what they say they are going to do.
We as a nation are going to suffer. There is a saying that goes, “you don’t miss the water until the well goes dry”. The well is going dry fast. Just look around you. More and more people a falling through the cracks. We have a big housing problem. The homeless population is growing. Wages for the working man has not kept up with inflation. Pension funds are drying up. Poverty is increasing while employment opportunities around the nation are drying up. Our infrastructure like roads, bridges, water treatment plants, natural gas lines and schools are failing. Big problems no solutions. Just talk talk talk by our elected officials. Our police and fire departments are stressed out by traffic accidents, administrative law enforcement and 911 calls. The list goes on and on.
I myself don’t lose sleep over these massive problems because I know that the end has to come. I do what I can in my own way and I have my own limitations. But I can’t stop the freight train from leaving the tracks.
It is a train wreck of our own making. There is nothing new under the sun. So enjoy life while you still can. Then check out. I am talking to the old ones here. We all see what is coming. It is the young that will have to fix it.
I grew up on a (non-farming) farm (think 30 acres, half forest, rest mostly idle) in middle TN. There were lots of things to do if you wanted: my family was heavily into Scouting (Boy and Girl, and both camped and hiked). The 4H was active, as was FFA (Future Farmers of America). You could do all sorts of different activities regarding nature, and there were several industries that were local (the Batesville Casket Company made coffins locally; there was a pajama factory, flour and grain mills, lumber yards and concrete companies, you name it). There was a busy downtown with shops and banks, the courthouse square was lined with small businesses that sold clothes, five-and-dime goods, a restaurant or two (so the lawyers could get lunch), and more. The people who lived there supported the local merchants, who bought their stuff locally and so on. The elementary, junior high and high schools were mostly within town, or nearby; the people were involved (if only to keep an eye on each other!) and voted in school board, city council and local official elections.
Somewhere in the 1970s it started to fall apart. The new high school (the old one was falling down) was built on the highway outside of downtown, and a new LEO / law complex as well. Things were spinning down; the casket company and the pajama factory both closed, without replacement. A Federal contractor in the next town (which injected lots of cash into the local economy through wages of skilled employees) was cut way back as part of the Peace Dividend ending the Cold War; other employers, such as the small companies that provided services to the contractor, were also diminished. Other outfits were sold, went under, got “rightsized”, and so on; few businesses came back in to fill the gaps. People went where the jobs were, and they weren’t there.
Part of it was Wal-Mart undercutting the local stores; part was kids leaving to get work and not coming back to raise families. It’s hard to say which losses were minor and which were critical; but the cultural onslaughts that diminished the Girl Scouts (political correctness and wacky SJW tendencies) and the Boy Scouts (gotta allow gay Scoutmasters, and parents were not thrilled about putting their children at risk of pedophile attentions) left less to do (and keep hormone-crazy children from losing control of themselves). One thing after another ….
We have go to start calling political correctness and SJW nonsense what it is; mental illness, not a “lifestyle” or “choice”. Until we reclaim society from the deviants, I doubt normal people will find a place for themselves – or a future for their children.
Without going into great detail when TSHTF soon, the Rural Folks will be 8 Gazillion times happier than the Urban Fried Fritters.
HF has been working on bottling and redistributing happiness. He calls it maple syrup. His is 128 times happier. I have fresh eggs, they’re only 12 times happier, but then I can offer them year around., so that is 12×12=144. My eggs are 16 times happier than HF’s syrup. Us rurals are really good with numbers and stuff.
Humans (especially Europeans) were not designed to live in such high population concentrations. We are not ants, we are mammals that live in herds called tribes. Each tribe was typically spread out in villges of around 100 or so people. Typically the average person never travelled more than a few miles from where they were born. Typically they lived around the same people from birth to death.
How far we’ve fallen…
@ Mr. Frosty: People have lived in high population cities for thousands of years. This is nothing new. People are social animals. The young have always left the rural areas to be in the cities because there is so much more culture and activities.
I am not judging rural life because it is great for the old. But it has it’s limitations. Young people want to explore the world. Old people have seen the world and want to recluse themselves to a simple life.
For the young in general rural life is boring. I am not talking about the children. I am talking about young ones in their twenties.
Let me ask you to consider this: What is stimulating to the mind of a young person living in a rural area? Really not much. People who decide to stay where they were born have little to say because they have not seen the world. Their world is small. Their talk is small. Their vision is small.
It is good that the young want to go out and see the world. They see things and places that put substance into their talk. Put ideas into their mind.
Personally I think it is great to be raised in a small community. My youngest daughter was and it did her good. But there comes a time when the young want to break out of the little world they grew up in and expand their mind. When this happens they usually don’t come back. Why? Because an expanded mind does not want to go back to the limited mindset that exists in a small community.
This is not falling. There is a time for expanding and a time for concentrating. Young minds want to expand. Old minds want to concentrate. I see nothing wrong with rural or urban living. It is all a matter of choice.
I respect your opinion, but it is so completely off the mark based on my experience that I have to wonder if you have ever met any young people in rural areas.
“Let me ask you to consider this: What is stimulating to the mind of a young person living in a rural area? Really not much. People who decide to stay where they were born have little to say because they have not seen the world. Their world is small. Their talk is small. Their vision is small.”
Young people who live in rural areas have far more freedom from a much younger age. The world offers more stimulation and experiences than anyone could possibly hope to grasp in a lifetime- weather, geography, botany, biology, husbandry, forestry, applied math, the cycle of the seasons- you can’t even see the stars in the city unless you visit a planetarium. And please spare me all of the cultural opportunities schtick. I took my ten year old to the Peabody Museum a couple of weeks ago and there weren’t ten people in the building besides us and only three or four were children in a city with a population of close to a million. It should have been packed to the gunwales but with the exception of some Chinese tourists and the two of us it was nearly vacant. As I said earlier there are few people on Earth as provincial as city folk. They may know their way around a hand held device but they haven’t got the first clue where the food comes from. If anyone displays small vision it’s clear who that is.
Lao Tzu, Witter Bynner translation
80
If a land is small and its people are few,
With tenfold enough to have and to do,
And if no one has schooled them to waste supply
In the country for which they live and would die,
Then not a boat, not a cart
Tempts this people to depart,
Not a dagger, not a bow
Has to be drawn or bent for show,
People reckon by knots in a cord,
Relish plain food on the board,
Simple clothing suits them well,
And they remain content to dwell
In homes their customs can afford.
Though so close to their own town another town grow
They can hear its dogs bark and its roosters crow,
Yet glad of life in the village they know,
Where else in the world shall they need to go?
Thank you for that bigfoot. Haven’t read any of that in
quite a while, My bad
This has all been studied by noted Harvard political scientist Professor Robert Putnam and is described in his book Bowling Alone. His research shows that cultural diversity destroys trust in communities.
Among other things, Putnam said that:
“… in the presence of diversity, we hunker down”, he said. “We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.”
Prof Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, “the most diverse human habitation in human history”, but his findings also held for rural South Dakota, where “diversity means inviting Swedes to a Norwegians’ picnic”.
I’ve often said that we can only have so much diversity before we destroy all sense of community.
In view of this man’s study, are any of the multiculturalists out there prepared to alter their views as to how much diversity can be tolerated before we bring disaster on ourselves? Are they willing to at least consider the possibility that the left has been badly wrong in defending impractical, even destructive policies as regards immigration, education of minorities, busing, minority set asides and other diversity issues–that maybe it’s time to emphasize unity rather than diversity?
Or has diversity become such a fetish among the progressive crowd that they are no longer able to consider even the possibility of changing their minds?
@ Anonymous. It is time for humans to grow up. There can be unity in diversity. It takes a change of mind.
Strike three….
You’re outta here !!!
It’s cheap but it’s not free….