The WalletHub report is titled “2019’s Most & Least Stressed Cities in America” and it examines the major conurbations across a series of metrics. The study was conducted in order to determine where the U.S. population copse best with stress.
In the U.S., research suggest that stress affects more than 100 million people. The leading causes are money (topping the poll of stress inducing factors), followed by work, family and relationships.
This was performed by assessing over 180 cities using 39 carefully selected metrics. The data set ranges from average weekly work hours to debt load to divorce and suicide rates. The outcome was that the most stressed cities are:
1 Detroit, MI
2 Cleveland, OH
3 Newark, NJ
4 Baltimore, MD
5 Philadelphia, PA
6 St. Louis, MO
7 Cincinnati, OH
8 Birmingham, AL
9 Wilmington, DE
10 Shreveport, LA
In contrast, the least stressed locales are:
173 San Jose, CA
174 Cedar Rapids, IA
175 South Burlington, VT
176 Fargo, ND
177 Plano, TX
178 Irvine, CA
179 Overland Park, KS
180 Sioux Falls, SD
181 Bismarck, ND
182 Fremont, CA
Meaning that Fremont in the state of California comes out as the least stressed place to live in the U.S.
Further survey highlights are shown in the following video:
Outside of the core rankings, there are some interesting findings relating to specific metrics. Taking the commute to work or school, Fayetteville, North Carolina, Shreveport, Louisiana, Augusta, Georgia and Las Cruces, New Mexico residents spend the fewest annual hours in traffic congestion per auto commuter (at around 7 hours, which is 23.4 times fewer than in Boston, the city where residents spend the most time idling away time in traffic, at 164 hours).
Another stress triggering issue is unemployment. With this measure, South Burlington, Vermont, has the lowest unemployment rate at 1.70 percent. This was found to be 5.3 times lower than in Detroit, the city with the highest at 9 percent.
Another area of likely to induce stress is getting divorced. On this measure, Fremont, California, has the lowest divorce rate, 10.22 percent, which is four times lower than in Cleveland, the city with the highest at 41.32 percent.
A final metric of interest is health. Taking into account the extremes, Burlington and South Burlington, Vermont, was found to have the lowest share of adults in fair or poor health, 9.90 percent. This is.7 times lower than in Corpus Christi, Texas, the city with the highest at 26.90 percent.
Commenting on the survey results, Dr. Sara Jansen Perry looks at the workplace aspect and what businesses can do to help to lower stress levels. She recommends: “Employers can reduce stress most directly by providing the appropriate resources to each individual employee, in the way they uniquely need. This last part is key because not every employee desires every resource an employer might have to offer.”
