Are people in "the best" towns happier? (New York: neighborhoods, buy)
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I've been thinking about this a lot lately. On any discussion board, there's always chatter around the "best" school districts and towns. What makes these places the best? Is a Manhasset homeowner inherently happier than someone in Bay Shore? Do children raised in RVC have better lives than those in Levittown? Is there anything that could cause a beloved town to be yanked off the "best" list?
"Good schools" is a liberal code word for "mostly white/East Asian and affluent" - EG, Manhasset has "good schools" because it's white and rich, Levittown has "decent schools" because it's white and working class, Hempstead has "bad schools" because it's mostly black and Hispanic. With very few exceptions, on Long Island, the racial composition of an area is the best predictor of the quality of the school district. I'll leave why that is as a problem for the reader, I'm simply pointing out the statistics.
That being said, I don't believe that the education you get in a district like Jericho is much different from the one you'd get in Sewanhaka unless you're at the upper end of achievement - top districts have more AP courses, gifted and talented classes, etc., but are also far more competitive. A friend who lives in Syosset tells me that many parents employ tutors for their smart kids to help them outperform other smart kids, and are politically active in the PTA to ensure their kids get preferred teachers. The district is predominately Asian and Jewish, two groups know for their scholarship, so that could play a role as well.
Beyond a certain level, the wealth of your area has little to do with happiness. Of course you're not going to be too happy growing up in an impoverished area where you have to worry about your personal safety, but once your basic needs are satisfied, you're not likely to derive lasting pleasure simply by living in a ritzy area. You may, however, derive pleasure from living in an area that is homogeneous:
Quote:
Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.
Thus, if you're white, you might be happier in overwhelmingly white Massapequa, whereas if you're Asian, you might be happier in Herricks, even though both are nice areas with "good schools".
was just gonna post the same thing. When I was in college I washed cars during the summer. Some of the happiest people I ever knew worked at the car wash. if they were able to play soccer at Flushing Meadows Park they were happy all week. I never forgot that.
It is clear from this forum that the people living in the "best" towns with the high pay, long hour, high stress jobs are not the happiest, since they constantly feel the need to put down anybody who doesn't follow their lifestyle. I think Interlude has a lot of good points, and that a major reason is because the people in the "best" towns tend to have very competitive personalities, and they aren't happy unless they can put others down.
"Good schools" is a liberal code word for "mostly white/East Asian and affluent" - EG, Manhasset has "good schools" because it's white and rich, Levittown has "decent schools" because it's white and working class, Hempstead has "bad schools" because it's mostly black and Hispanic. With very few exceptions, on Long Island, the racial composition of an area is the best predictor of the quality of the school district. I'll leave why that is as a problem for the reader, I'm simply pointing out the statistics.
That being said, I don't believe that the education you get in a district like Jericho is much different from the one you'd get in Sewanhaka unless you're at the upper end of achievement - top districts have more AP courses, gifted and talented classes, etc., but are also far more competitive. A friend who lives in Syosset tells me that many parents employ tutors for their smart kids to help them outperform other smart kids, and are politically active in the PTA to ensure their kids get preferred teachers. The district is predominately Asian and Jewish, two groups know for their scholarship, so that could play a role as well.
Beyond a certain level, the wealth of your area has little to do with happiness. Of course you're not going to be too happy growing up in an impoverished area where you have to worry about your personal safety, but once your basic needs are satisfied, you're not likely to derive lasting pleasure simply by living in a ritzy area. You may, however, derive pleasure from living in an area that is homogeneous:
Thus, if you're white, you might be happier in overwhelmingly white Massapequa, whereas if you're Asian, you might be happier in Herricks, even though both are nice areas with "good schools".
When I was in the pool business working from one end of the island to another and everything in between, I found that in my experience the most miserable bitter tool bags were the rich ones in the "nice" neighborhoods. They weren't all necessarily nasty, but boy they were miserable. Just goes to show the old saying "money doesn't buy happiness" couldn't be more true.
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