Methodology 🛠️: We did urban-rural comparisons using a novel, continuous, and objective measure, that avoids defining city boundaries and detects sub-urban effects. We calculate the shortest distance to city centers, normalized to account for differences in city sizes 🌆

Key Findings 1 📈: We analyzed the average happiness, meaningful life, family sat., friendship sat., loneliness, income, financial sat., and job sat., as a function of urbanicity. For all variables, except income, urban residents score worse.

Key Findings 2 📈: We also analyzed the variability in all variables as a function of urbanicity. For all variables, except for general happiness, urban areas showed increased standard deviation. This indicates greater inequality in urban settings.

Key Findings 3 📈: We discovered 'optimal distances' in the hinterlands of cities - areas with highest averages & least variation. These optimal distances are relative to city size, so we show them for three cities of different sizes.

Conclusion ✨: UK urban areas are associated with the lowest and most unequal satisfaction levels. At the same time, these cities are incredibly popular and offer an abundance of opportunities. We term this conflict the urban desirability paradox.

For the full story, see https://t.co/Y2mkqA10jN And thanks to my collaborator, @karoline_huth, @SachaEpskamp, @BorsboomDenny, and Han van der Maas 😊