The ratio of people living in cities and rural areas has fluctuated significantly during the past century across the industrialized world. People began aggressively moving to cities in the first half of the century. Living outside of cities became fashionable in the second half, but individuals continued to lead lives that were very tied to them and their places of employment. It makes sense to mention the desire to be happier, to have more possibilities, and to realize oneself as the driving force behind these efforts. However, it is a question if city lifestyle provides more happiness than one in a country and therefore if this migration worth it. This research attempts to provide an answer about the relation between the power of life urbanization and happiness.
This research is based on Tonnies’ theory regarding urbanization. For Tonnies there are two types of social groupings: Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (Tonnies, 2001, p. 17.) The first refers to social groups that are based on feelings of togetherness whereas Gesellschaft refers to societies that have a more individualistic focus. He argued that rural areas are more community focused whereas cities are more individualistic. (Tonnies, 2001, p. 20.)
Focus on community associates with happier life; however, living in a town is not the only way to achieve this. People in the city may become more community focused with the effect of the factor of religion.
Literature Review
The negative effect of city lifestyle on the happiness of citizens discussed in many articles, however, the material for research usually limited to a small number of states and cities. Kozaryn and Ott made their research in the USA, where found average happiness in big cities lower than in towns and country (Ott, 2017, p. 625). Authors explain such situation through the quality of social relations that takes roots in heterogeneity, size, and density of the city. This factor in developed countries works in combination with capitalism and its negative social effects.
The other research on Latin American cities (Valente and Berry, 2016) shows much less difference in levels of happiness in rural and urban areas. In this case, authors mention an influence of specific culture phenomena – familism. Therefore, an important difference between Anglo-Saxon and Latin American levels of happiness in the city correlates with their tendency to be more or less individualistic and has individualism as the main value. For familism "what is important is the time spent with family and close friends or dedicated to religious services in a culture where religion is highly valued" (Valente and Berry, 2016, p.66). In this context, the place of living has less importance itself (however, living closer to family and friends can make a person happier by making logistic better).
Research on data from EU (Italia) shows that urbanization affects differently some components of happiness domain: “satisfaction with economic conditions is not affected by urbanization, job and family satisfaction increase with urbanization. Conversely, satisfaction with health, friendship, spare time and environment decrease with urbanization.” (Bernini and Tamieri, 2017, p.1) This research shows that happiness in a complicated category and gives more details on possible reasons on integral evaluations of happiness (it is important what spheres people find more valuable and then see more positive or negative effects).
Wastendorp (2016) provided research on urbanization in Asia inbound with urban religion. This author points the lack of attention to religion in the city and its effect on the happiness of people, moderating negative social factors of the urbanization. This way religion becomes some feature making the big city closer to the countryside in parameters of social integrity, the closeness of community.
Senasu and Singhapakdi (2017) in their paper studying happiness in Thailand using as independable variables “family satisfaction, health satisfaction, environmental livability, and neighbor relationship” (Senasu and Singhapakdi, 2017, p.1), in addition, they investigate the effect of religion on the other independent variables seeing it as a moderating factor.
Finally, Cohen and Johnson (2016) in their paper studying relations between well-being and religion not focusing on urbanization. However, their primary auditory of respondents is concentrated in developed countries, where the urban population is dominating. Authors point that western religions may have a double effect on well-being, on one hand, they have positive outcomes, working like an instrument of social integration and comfort achievement or giving a person the sense of life. On the other hand, it can have a negative effect through conflicts on religious reasons with other groups, leveling up an anxiety or requiring the person to pass some stressful quest in their life.
Neither of research above has been done on Australian material, therefore the question for this particular region is relevant for analysis in this paper. Australia is a country with the level of individualistic values close to the US, therefore it is possible to expect the high difference between big city and country happiness. At the same time, people in Australia have relation with the religion of the same type as in US (the same roots of Christianity and similar demography), expected outcomes, however, can be of different quality.
Method
For statistical investigation of the question in this research used correlation and regression analysis based on the data of World Values Survey (WVS, n.d.). All respondents for this research chosen from Australian cities and towns. Technically the process of analysis done with application of SPSS statistical package.
As a dependent variable in the model chosen happiness. In the survey, this information provided in question V10: Taking all things together, would you say you are (read out and code one answer):
1 Very happy
2 Rather happy
3 Not very happy
4 Not at all happy.
This question gives four grades of happiness that are relatively informative.
As independent variables in the model chosen size of the town and in addition religiousness.
Information about size of town provided in question V253 of survey: (Code size of town):
1 Under 2,000
2 2,000 - 5,000
3 5 - 10,000
4 10 - 20,000
5 20 - 50,000
6 50 - 100,000
7 100 - 500,000
8 500,000 and more
This way this variable has eight grades. Instead of formal division to cities and countryside settlements in this research scale that is more informative applied.
Information about religiousness provided in the question V147: Independently of whether you attend religious services or not, would you say you are (read out and code one answer):
1 A religious person
2 Not a religious person
3 An Atheist.
This variable has three grades that are on the lowest possible level of informative.
The research questions are:
Is there a relation between urbanization and happiness in Australia, and if so how it is directed?
Is there a relation between religiousness and happiness in Australia, and if so hot it is directed?
Do urbanization and religion affect happiness in opposite directions and balance each other?
Analysis
Results of correlation analysis are provided in the table Correlations (See Output). Pearson Correlations between variables shows the quality of relation, separately is presented statistical significance (level applied here 0.01). As well in the table shown N values – a number of cases participating in the calculation as not all participants of the survey provided answers relevant for correlation analysis (missing values).
Correlations between the feeling of happiness and other variables are weak (0.08 with religiousness and 0.028 with urbanization). However, the correlation between happiness and religiousness is statistically significant (p-value <0.01). The correlation between religiousness and urbanization is stronger (0.045), but statistically insignificant (p-value <0.092).
After analysis of this table, expected quality of regression model is low as variables have no strong significant correlations.
Results of regression analysis (Geert van den Berg, 2016) shown in tables Model Summary, ANOVA, and Coefficients (See Output). For regression building as a model have been used linear one, dependent variable (Y) – "feeling of happiness", independent variables "religious person" (x1) and "size of town" (x2).
The model with evaluated coefficients:
Y = 1.553+0.059x1+0.006x2.
By this model, religiousness affects the happiness of Australians in the positive direction (the less person is religious the lower is its subjective happiness). However, the coefficient is 0.059 and x1 have only three grades, the possible effect is very weak. Size of town and happiness related negatively to the happiness of Australians (the higher is the size the lower is happiness), but again coefficient is just 0.006 and x2 has eight grades, therefore it cannot change the level of happiness significantly in common sense.
Standardized Coefficient (Beta) allows comparing the effect of independent variables; it makes comparison easier as this coefficient have standard deviations as their units (Andale, 2017). By this measure, an effect of religion is much stronger than of urbanization (0.073 and 0.024); however, both parameters are low. This coefficient as well shows directions of effect, it is the same as by и coefficients evaluation.
The quality of this model shows R Square measure that is very low - 0.006. Such R Square tells about the inadequacy of variable or chosen model. Independent variables describe only 0.6% of happiness variance. Adjusted R Square allows the researcher to compare the descriptive power of models with a different number of predictors. When additional term adds to the quality of model this measure increase but a decrease in a case of overfitting (Investopedia, 2015). Adjusted R-square for a model with two independent variables is also low – 0.005.
The significance of the model is tested with F-test (value is 4.236), by this test the model is significant as p-value is 0.015 (<0.05).
The significance of particular coefficients tested with a t-test. Values for a, b1 and b2 are 28.876, 2.728, 0.89 respectably. Among this values, statistically significant are only constant and b1 (p-values <0.05). Therefore, this model does not prove the significant effect of urbanization on the happiness in Australia. On the other hand, it shows an effect of religion that is statistically significant but weak to the level of no practical sense.
Discussion
The analysis above gives the next answers to research questions:
There is a weak positive relationship between happiness and religiousness and the weak negative relation between happiness and urbanization in Australia. Urbanization has less effect on happiness than religion; therefore, these parameters cannot balance each other.
This result does not support any of preliminary dispositions, moreover, they point that importance of parameters, and strength of the effect is opposite to expected ones.
Such results may come from bad detailing in variables; they have 3-8 grades that may lead to hard interpretation and low strictness of results. Better data for such research could be collected within the survey using the index for happiness, absolute numbers of citizens for urbanization and index for religiousness.
In addition, research on this data may be repeated with the other statistical methods better fitting the case of a low number of grades of parameters.
One of the possible limitations of this research is the sample of people who live in rural areas as it might be too small compared to those who live in the cities. This is due to the fact that Australia is mostly urbanized and the lack of participants who live in rural areas will make the sampling not representative of the people who live in the countryside. This might cause issues in terms of accurately representing the people of the countryside and thus, can lead to potential false conclusions regarding the difference between the people who live in the countryside and those who live in large cities in terms of their wellbeing.
References
Andale. (2017). What is a Standardized Beta Coefficient? [Online] (updated 2017) Available at:
Bernini, C., Tampieri, A., and CREA. (2017). Urbanization and its Effects on the Happiness Domains. [Online] (updated 2017) Available at:
Cohen, A.B., Johnson, K.A. (2016). The Relation between Religion and Well-Being. Applied Research Quality Life, (2016):1-15.
Investopedia. (2015). What's the difference between r-squared and adjusted r-squared? [Online] (updated 2017) Available at:
Ott, J. (2017). Less Happiness in Cities, but Why and so What? One More Reason to Stop Overpopulation. Journal of Happiness Study, (2017): 625-630.
Geert van den Berg, R. (2016). Linear Regression in SPSS – A Simple Example. [Online] (updated 2017) Available at:
Senasu, K., and Singhapakdi, A. (2017). Determinants of happiness in Thailand: The moderating role of religiousness, Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, (2017):1-21.
Tönnies, F. 2001, A general classification of key ideas, Community and Civil Society, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, J. Harris, Ed.; M. Hollis, Trans., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 15-22.
Valente, R.R., and Berry, B.J.L. (2016). Dissatisfaction with city life? Latin America revisited. Cities, 50 (2016): 62-67.
Westendorp, M. (2016). Peter van der Veer (ed.): Handbook of Religion and the Asian City: Aspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century. Review of Religious Research, 58: 579-580.
WVS. (n.d.). World Values Survey wave 6 (2010-2014). [Online] (updated 2017) Available at:
We will email this sample to you with pleasure!
Type your email