Neighborhood type, social disequilibrium, and happiness.

This study attempts to relate (a) types of urban neighborhoods with extreme scores on the economic status dimension and rates of social and psychological disequilibrium to happiness of its residents, and (b) both aggregate and individual measures of economic status to happiness. Nonverbal behaviors such as suicide, attempted suicide, homicide, marital separation, and psychiatric disruptions served as indicators of the location of "more or less" happiness in the urban environment. Interviews in two types of neighborhoods revealed that people in the high economic-low misery neighborhood experienced greater happiness than those living in the low economic-high misery neighborhood.