The Times

Where Are The Happiest People? A nationwide survey suggests they're in the suburbs

BY GEORGE GALLUP Director, American Institute of Public Opinion SOME YEARS AGO, I undertook a study to find out who the happiest people in America are, where they live, and the circumstances of life which seem to contribute most to happiness. This investigation hasn't been completed, but enough has been learned to shed light upon a man's chances for happiness if he elects to live in Oak Grove, Mo., rather than St. Louis, or in Birmingham, Mich., rather than Detroit. In conducting the survey, our method in each case was to ask people to place themselves in one of three categories—very happy, fairly happy, or not very happy. In addition we asked a battery of questions about schooling, occupation, domicile, and ways of living. All major groups in our population were represented and in the right proportion. In their answers, processed on the electronic machines and slide rules, lay the data we were seeking in our study. One of the more interesting facts that has now emerged is that people who live in smaller communities are happier than those in the largest cities. In fact, the unhappiest people in America are to be found in the largest cities. Usually these persons work in a factory or at a monotonous job. They get their fun out of life by going to movies or to a bar. They seek happiness not within themselves but from the world outside. Religion plays a relatively unimportant part in their lives. By contrast, the happiest people tend to be deeply religious. They find great pleasure in reading, gardening, and the pursuits normally identified with life in a smaller community. Their family, their friends, and their community mean a great deal to them. Few relied on material possessions for happiness. "To live," as Justice Holmes observed long ago, "is to function—" and a man does not function by keeping up with the Joneses but by finding a way of life where he is effective, according to the happy people we interviewed. These guides or conditions for happiness became apparent as we processed the data from thousands of interviews with the happy and the unhappy, the functioning and the floundering. How do they relate to life in the suburbs as we know it today? First of all, let us explore first an area our studies showed to be vital—the bearing of religion on human happiness. People who live in the suburbs are churchgoers. Almost half of all adults in the nation (and this figure includes members of all religious groups) attend church once a week or oftener, on the average. In a recent survey it was found that 46% of all the adults interviewed across the nation had attended church during the previous seven days. But in the suburban towns more than half (54%) had attended church during the same period. (By contrast, consider these figures from "the good old days"—in 1860 only 23% of the entire population were church members.) IT GOES without saying that the Ferndales and Park Views of this country qualify as the smaller communities where we found the largest percentage of happy people. And in the suburbs, of course, people come naturally by the simple, personal pleasures like reading and gardening which, on the record, count for so much in life. But there is also the great question of functioning in Justice Holmes' sense—how effective in our new kind of urban-industrial society is the man who sets such store by his own house and lot, by his familiar round, in contrast to the boundless opportunities offered by collective life in the city? To come to a conclusion, we must consider first the response Americans everywhere are making to the new society. Here the facts are clear. Farming, which used to be our chief occupation, is now the pursuit of only a small percentage of our people—8% to be exact. And interestingly, along with the decline in farming as an occupation there has been a sharp decline in the number of unskilled laborers. Our new society requires more education, more training, and our people have responded accordingly. In the short period of twenty years the percentage of our population that has been graduated from high school has nearly doubled. Within the next two or three years more than half of all persons in America will have had a high-school education or better. To be effective today men need to be trained. And what is the situation in the third of our population which is suburban? One in every four of the adults living in these communities has attended college. The figure for the United States as a whole is one in six. To me, one of the most interesting aspects of suburban life is the interest in education. In no other type of community can one find so many well-educated people, and certainly in no other type of community do so many parents want their children to have good elementary and secondary education leading to a college education later. In no other type of community, in other words, have people prepared themselves so well to live effectively in our world as it is today. LIVING IN SUBURBIA is certainly no sure road to happiness. Our investigation established definitely that people can be happy in almost any set of circumstances. And having lived in a suburb myself for many years I am well aware of the mass of material Continued on page 43 Suburbia Today, March 1961 9