Urban living linked to lower well-being and economic satisfaction

A recent survey of 156,000 British adults found that city living among residents aged 40 and over is associated with lower levels of social and economic satisfaction and overall well-being.

“We find that city residents have the highest incomes. However, we find no parallel psychological benefits. On the contrary, residents in highly urban areas score worse on all psychological measures related to well-being, social satisfaction and economic satisfaction,” lead author Adam Finnemann of the University of Amsterdam and colleagues wrote in their study published in Scientific progress.

Researchers estimate that by 2050, the percentage of people living in cities will reach 68%, compared to an increase of just 10% in the 1910s.

In high-income and developed countries, previous studies documented that people living in rural areas reported higher levels of happiness than their urban counterparts, what economists call the “rural happiness paradox.” Meanwhile, cities and urban life can be overwhelming, indifferent and lonely and have multiple disadvantages such as higher levels of air pollution, traffic problems that cause congestion and longer commutes, and even a greater prevalence of poverty and poverty. infectious diseases.

Despite these disadvantages, cities are popular because they allow people to live close to each other, which could result in greater exchange of ideas, knowledge and creativity. Because cities are known as technology hubs that promise to create enormous wealth and innovation, Finnemann and team investigated whether cities are delivering on the promise of creating more social and economic opportunities for their residents – or not.

The team studied data from a large sample of 156,000 adults aged 40 to 70 from the UK biobank. The average age of the study participants was 55 years, and more than half were women. Overall, 97% of them were white.

The authors noted that despite the abundance of people, social opportunities and high incomes in cities, people living in rural areas scored higher on overall happiness.

“This suggests a broader conundrum, which we call the ‘urban desirability paradox’ to highlight the contrast between the popularity of cities and the psychological state of their inhabitants,” they explained. “The increased inequality in social and economic satisfaction is consistent with theories of urban accumulation, which document that cities disproportionately benefit the already advantaged.”

“The disadvantage of urban happiness is great in North America, Western Europe and large parts of Oceania. Urban economic dissatisfaction is consistent with and can be explained by increased costs of living, especially housing prices, in cities,” the authors wrote. “We believe it is likely that the economic struggle will become generalized as a result of the global housing crisis.

“Suburban and peri-urban areas have several characteristics that distinguish them from highly urbanized and rural areas. “Practically, our research raises concerns about the psychological health of the 56 million Britons living in urban areas and invites further research into the feasibility of geographically targeted health and policy interventions targeting psychological health,” she added. “Furthermore, by joining the existing literature on wellbeing, global inequality and the global housing crisis, we hypothesize that the urban psychological struggles we have identified are applicable beyond Britain.”