# Why are people in New York City so unhappy (according to a reputable study)? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 7, 2014, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947 "2014-11-07T02:30:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellis_Aponte_Jr)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/21 "2014-11-07T15:00:32Z")
My feeling is that it’s mainly what **delphica** said. The city attracts ambitious people and by definition ambitious people are dissatisfied with their current circumstances. An aggravating factor could be, not just the winter weather and not just the small living spaces, but the combination of the two. On a freezing night are you going to brave the streets or are you going to hole up in your little hovel? ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/22 "2014-11-07T15:15:28Z")
They are liberals: hateful, mean-spirited, intolerant people. ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/23 "2014-11-07T15:35:41Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > I don’t have a good answer for that but I can attest that people in Louisiana tend to be fat, dumb and really happy because they party a whole lot and it is warm most of the year. Combine that with low expectations and a very low cost of living and you tend to make a really happy population regardless of any other problems. There is nothing more vital than instilling low expectations in our young people. ---
**Author:** ![Abracadebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f04885/32.png) [@Abracadebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abracadebra)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/24 "2014-11-07T17:04:51Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > You must have a lot of patience and possess a certain energy level to really do well in NYC. A lot of the decisions you make on a daily basis kinda suck. Are you gonna wait on the freezing cold or swampy hot subway platform, along with all the scary crazy people, only to board a crowded smelly train? Or are you gonna hustle your ass a mile down the crowded sidewalk in the pouring rain/burning heat/snow blizzard? Or are you gonna spend money you don’t have on another cab? You go through this multiple times a day, maybe with babies or kids in tow, and you’d start to feel bad too. > > There’s also a huge income inequality problem that’s much more apparent than perhaps in other places. Poor people hate seeing all that wealth flashed before their eyes all the time, and rich people hate feeling guilty and inconvenienced by all the poor people. This sounds like a huge pain in the ass to me. I’m just too laid back to have to scramble for transportation. ---
**Author:** ![Lukeinva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lukeinva/32/17872_2.png) [@Lukeinva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lukeinva)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/25 "2014-11-07T17:14:02Z")
As the Mayor Lenny in Ghost Busters says “Being miserable and treating other people like dirt is every New Yorker’s God-given right.” 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/26 "2014-11-07T17:20:21Z")
I have lived in NYC for a year, and it sucked. Granted, I was a kid, and I lived in one of the shittier places (Flushing), but it does seem worse than other big cities. Chicago, Montreal, DC, Toronto, are all just as big and cold and crowded but everyone seems happier in those cities and the place is noticeably cleaner, too. San Francisco is not cold but seems pretty crowded and big too. I am only talking about the tourist areas and the subways - it seems like NYC can’t even get its shit together enough to have Times Square relatively clean and nice. I never wanted to live in a big city before but my experiences were limited to Detroit (blah) and NYC. Now that I have seen others I think I might not mind so much. I don’t know, NYC just sucks. I would never want to live there. And I am an upstater and love visiting. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/27 "2014-11-07T17:24:40Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > If you overcrowd animals into a cage, the stress caused by the crowding makes them all less happy, even if the cage is a comfortable temperature and there’s plenty of food and mates. Bingo. It’s been known for awhile that [living in an urban environment is linked to a dramatic increase in emotional and mental disorders.](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v474/n7352/full/nature10190.html) Schizophrenia, anxiety attacks, depression, substance abuse – not pretty. It’s too bad the city is otherwise such a helpful invention. They’re engines of economic activity, intellectual development, and it’s more efficient than rural/sub-urban living, but the constant stress and alienation fucks our brains up. I wonder how much of this is related to the Dunbar number. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/28 "2014-11-07T17:38:18Z")
Constant super-villain attacks. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/29 "2014-11-07T18:38:59Z")
> [@delphica](#): > > Maybe other places are happier because they are exporting their unhappy people to New York. Just an anecdote but by far the unhappiest person I know really, really wants to move to NYC. He’s the kind of guy that somewhat romanticizes heroin and booze-addicted authors writing about the grim squalor of their daily lives. Do say hello when you meet him kvetching miserably about people talking loud enough to hear their conversations in a restaurant or pretty young women wearing skimpy clothes in public just to torture his libido :D. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/30 "2014-11-07T19:02:14Z")
I haven’t lived in NYC, or even visited it much, but I have a hypothesis about the dissatisfaction/unhappiness. You get a lot of young kids moving to NYC because it’s “where the action is”, and “the big city”. A lot of them probably end up being pretty disillusioned by it- bad weather, crowding, the aforementioned daily hassles, the lower bang-for-your-buck, etc… and no small percentage of them probably don’t see their grand plans to be in fashion/acting/whatever in NYC pan out either, so they’re basically dealing with all this shit, and not making as much money as they’d like, doing the jobs they wanted to do. Sounds like a recipe for unhappiness. A good chunk of these people go home, but for the ones who won’t or can’t, they’re kind of having all the fun of seeing others actually pull off whatever it was that they couldn’t. Plus, they have kids, etc… and are stuck in the city and don’t have yards, etc… same bullshit as before, but now it’s really a pain at that stage of life. Then you have a contingent of relatively broke locals who have to deal with the same daily bullshit, and also have to deal with low income and being minorities for the most part. Unhappiness again. Finally, I get the impression that you have more visible income inequality there- you are likely see celebrities, heads of state, royalty, etc… more often than in say… Oklahoma City, and the local contingent of rich folks is probably pretty visible as well, with the city being so small. So I ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/31 "2014-11-07T19:11:08Z")
If I were in NYC for any length of time, the population density would get to me. We live in the country without any close neighbors, but if I had a multimillion dollar lottery win, I’d buy the two nearby homes and raze them. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/32 "2014-11-07T19:25:01Z")
Eh, these studies don’t really measure happiness, they measure whether people say they’re happy or not. I think there’s a lot of cultural difference in the degree to which people are willing to say they’re happy or unhappy, and that this usually doesn’t have much correlation to their actual happiness. Basically, New Yorkers are a lot more willing to complain to strangers (and thus, poll-takers) than people in Louisiana. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/33 "2014-11-07T19:26:41Z")
Because the culture there is unusually stressful even for a very large city? That it has one of the highest costs of living in the world? That the weather sucks at almost all times of year? None of this is debatable. There is nothing relaxing about NYC, that’s not what people do there. By the way, to whomever posted about SF, San Francisco may be densely populated but large, it ain’t. It’s only something like 825 thousand. ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/34 "2014-11-07T19:29:29Z")
1- We have the world’s best museums 2- You can get Fallafel or a hot dog at 4AM, where else can you do that? 3- You can walk down the street and hear 5 different languages being spoken 4- You have restaurants from literally, every country in the world 5- You can get pretty much anywhere on a bicycle, even when it snows 6- Any/all clubs or hobbies are represented, Italian Cooking, French Poetry, Capoeira, building model cars… etc 7- A city full of intelligent, opinionated people 8- Great sports franchises 9- Tons of independent cinema theaters 10- A city that is vibrant and alive, teeming with humanity ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Righteous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Dr.Righteous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Righteous)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/35 "2014-11-07T19:43:36Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > these days a million bucks _might_ buy you a three-room apartment in a building with an elevator, and a partially obstructed view of Bayonne. Yeah man… for that kind of dough you should be able to buy a place with a FULLY obstructed view of Bayonne. 😉 xoxo, a Native New Yorker (who now lives in NJ) ---
**Author:** ![Surreal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eada6e/32.png) [@Surreal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Surreal)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/36 "2014-11-07T20:17:00Z")
The vast ethnic diversity of NYC is likely a factor, as diversity erodes social trust, altruism, civic-mindedness, and promotes social isolation. _“In the presence of diversity, we hunker down. 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.”_ - Robert D. Putnam [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x/full) ---
**Author:** ![joyfool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/37 "2014-11-07T20:38:11Z")
> [@Robert163](#): > > 1- We have the world’s best museums > 2- You can get Fallafel or a hot dog at 4AM, where else can you do that? > 3- You can walk down the street and hear 5 different languages being spoken > 4- You have restaurants from literally, every country in the world > 5- You can get pretty much anywhere on a bicycle, even when it snows > 6- Any/all clubs or hobbies are represented, Italian Cooking, French Poetry, Capoeira, building model cars… etc > 7- A city full of intelligent, opinionated people > 8- Great sports franchises > 9- Tons of independent cinema theaters > 10- A city that is vibrant and alive, teeming with humanity So all _this_ is why New Yorkers have a reputation for being unhappy, per the thread title? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![babygoat666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/2acd7d/32.png) [@babygoat666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/babygoat666)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/38 "2014-11-07T21:25:29Z")
The study leaned on a questionnaire that has been administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the last several years and asks respondents: “In general, how satisfied are you with your life?” The study ranked those self-reported answers and adjusted them for income, housing prices, age and other factors that might influence how happy a place could be. :dubious::dubious::dubious: > [@TriPolar](#): > > Why are fish wet? > > People in NYC are so unhappy because they are in NYC. Because they die out of water. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/39 "2014-11-07T22:28:29Z")
Many New Yorkers were not born there. Happy people stay where they are, because they are happy there. Unhappy people move. I think a more revealing question would be about satisfaction. Having a life you find enjoyable and having a life you find meaningful and fulfilling are not the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![BaldDudePeekskill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b5e925/32.png) [@BaldDudePeekskill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BaldDudePeekskill)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947/40 "2014-11-07T23:04:08Z")
[quote=“even\_sven, post:39, topic:703947”] Many New Yorkers were not born there. Happy people stay where they are, because they are happy there. Unhappy people move. Having been born, raised and spent a great deal of my life in NYC, I now hate it…why? There are no more New Yorkers! The city is a tourist paradise for shopping in overpriced chain stores…most of the interesting people have been priced out. Most of the funky, crappy little owner owned specialty shops have been replaced by H & M or Zara …the rents are out of control and the boroughs are not far behind… Williamsburg, seriously? Bushwick? We used to be scared to go there! My fourth floor walk up dingy tenement apartment with railroad rooms and paper thin walls was $3,200…in Brooklyn, no less. I moved to the suburbs because I didn’t have half a million dollars laying around to purchase a studio apartment. Mini-rant…I miss my city, but so many other places are far more interesting now. Oh, and the weather? Aside from six days in the fall and spring? Miserable. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-people-in-new-york-city-so-unhappy-according-to-a-reputable-study/703947.md?page=3)