New Study: Happiest People Live In Small, Rural Towns

If you're happy and you know it -- you're probably living in a small rural community.

A new study by the Vancouver School of Economics and McGill University in Canada analyzed 400,000 responses to surveys regarding people's well-being in more than 1,200 communities representing Canada's entire geography.

The researchers asked: Are happier communities richer, for instance? Are the people there more educated? Do they spend more time in church?

Their chief finding is a striking association between population density -- the concentration of people in a given area -- and happiness.  

When the researchers ranked all 1,215 communities by average happiness, they found that average population density in the 20% most miserable communities was more than eight times greater than in the happiest 20% of communities.

"Life is significantly less happy in urban areas," the paper concluded.

So what makes the happiest communities different from all the rest? 

Aside from fewer people, the authors found that the happiest communities had shorter commute times and less expensive housing, and that a smaller share of the population was foreign-born.  They also found that people in the happiest communities are less transient than in the least happy communities, that they are more likely to attend church and that they are significantly more likely to feel a "sense of belonging" in their communities.

It may seem contradictory that greater happiness is correlated with both lower population density (implying fewer interpersonal interactions) and a greater sense of "belonging" in one's community (implying stronger social connections). But a significant body of research shows that having a strong social network is key to well-being. Some studies indicate that small towns and rural areas are more conducive than cities to forming strong social bonds.

Perhaps even more surprising are the factors that don't appear to play a major role in community-level differences in happiness: average income levels and rates of unemployment and education. People may move to cities for good-paying jobs, but the study strongly suggests it's not making them any happier.

These findings comport with similar studies done in the United States, which have revealed a "rural-urban happiness gradient:" The farther away from cities people live, the happier they tend to be.