Does Where You Live Impact Your Happiness? (E79)

Happiness for Cynics podcast

This week, Marie and Pete talk about how our environment and where we live impacts our health and happiness levels. 

Show notes

Wealth distribution, Happiness and Quintiles

In the podcast Marie and Pete were discussing the wealth distribution in Australia and how research has shown a correlation between wealth distribution and physical health which can have a direct negative impact on our overall happiness. Pete also mentions quintiles in the podcast. A quintile is any of five equal groups into which a population can be divided according to the distribution of values of a particular variable. Put simply a quintile is one-fifth of a ranked list.

Transcript

[Happy intro music -background]

M: Welcome to happiness for cynics and thanks for joining us as we explore all the things I wish I’d known earlier in life but didn’t.

P: This podcast is about how to live the good life. Whether we’re talking about a new study or the latest news or eastern philosophy, our show is all about discovering what makes people happy.

M: So, if you’re like me and you want more out of life, listen in and more importantly, buy in because I guarantee if you do, the science of happiness can change your life.

P: Plus, sometimes I think we’re kind of funny.

[Intro music fadeout]

… [Whispered conversation]

M: That’s you… you’re up.

P: Are we on?

M: Yes, we’re on.

P: We’re on? Microphone’s on?

M: We’re on!

P: [Starts intro drumming theme song] Da da da!

M: Hey!

P: Laugh! It’s a bit like the Muppets, isn’t it? [High pitched Muppet voice singing] “It’s time to make the music. It’s time to light the lights.”

M: Laugh. We’re showing our age again.

P: I don’t care, the Muppets were brilliant, Jim Henson was a God.

M: I’ll give you that, definitely.

P: I watched Willow this week.

M: Oh!

P: That was my favourite little movie.

M: Yeah, I love it.

P: Yeah, yeah, it was cool.

M: Were you happy? Did it bring you happiness?

P: It did. I laughed and smiled a lot about Val Kilmer’s really bad acting, laugh.

M: The other one to watch if you were a Muppets fan is Dark Crystal.

P: Oh! That’s on a different level!

M: That’s gave me nightmares.

P: Yeah. It’s brilliant.

M & P: Laugh!

P: Mmm..mm, the Skeksies.

M: Yes, oh that’s it.

P: So, I’m going to get all hippie and back to my yogi routes. So, imagine me in my sarongs in a garden and clinging my little symbols and my singing bowls.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: I just want everyone to join hands for a second.

M: We can’t. We’re in lockdown.

P: Yeah, this is the whole point. We’re doing a virtual hand.

M: Doing a virtual handhold?

P: Doing virtual hands, yes.

M: I’m with you, I’m with you.

P: Okay, so. Unless you’re driving – everybody close your eyes join hands and just scan –

M: I’m in the correct pose and my belly’s rising.

P: Laugh.

M: Marie’s been doing meditation courses.

P: Laugh. So, this is a virtual handhold, because in Sydney, we are in lockdown.

Melbourne has just gone into its fifth lockdown. It’s a bit tough at the moment, and I want everyone to just scan their bodies and breathe into their backs, not into your belly. I want you to breathe into your back, into your lower spine. Think of your pelvis just above your pelvis at the back of your body, breathe.

Really important for us all to realise that there’s a lot of stuff going on at the moment and this is a really good way to get into your seat of power. Not only your seat of power, but it is also the best way to diaphragmatic breathe. And for those people out there who were sitting lots and getting a little bit of neck tension and upper a back tension. If you can increase your diaphragmatic breathing and breathe into your lower spine, feel your lower back against the back of the chair and push into it when you breathe. That is the best breath you’re going to take. And namaste. Laugh.

M: I feel great.

P: There we go. There’s a little tip for you. So, I hope no one was doing that when they were driving and then crashed into a pole, laugh.

M: Where are they going? We’re all in lockdown because the only the only people that we talk to is Sydney and Melbourne people, of course.

P & M: Laugh.

M: We were trending in Ireland the other week! So, hello –

P: Really the Irish like us?

M: – hello to our listeners in Ireland. I had a trip planned to your country last year that never happened.

P: We had a trip planned. Hello to County Cork.

M: We were going to kiss the… what is it?

P: Blarney Stone.

M: Yeah. I mean, that is disgusting if you think about it. Not covid safe.

P: Laugh, very not covid safe!

M: Laugh.

P: Mmm brimstone, yummy, laugh.

M: Mmm hmm. All right, well, what are we going to talk about today Pete?

P: So, I’m taking the lead I’m going to lead everyone down the rabbit hole here and I’m asking Marie specifically here to just hold my hand and make a jump here because I’m going to go down a path and I’m hoping you’ll all come with me. Laugh.

M: I’ve got sweats, I don’t like giving up control.

P: Laugh. Ah! Interesting you say that because this does have relevance to control.

M: Oooh.

P: So, coming across some information in my research in my first semester of university health and happiness are very much linked. And we’ve talked about this before, and some of the information that came out of the Torrens University by Professor John Glover of the Public Health and Information Service unit was all about healthy suburbs. And how in Australia in particular we can actually correlate your suburb to your health condition.

And the interesting thing is that suburbs that are next door to each other have vastly different presenting diseases. And they did a little example of this on the talk that I was listening to. So, something like Surry Hills in Sydney could be next to Erskineville and Erskineville could have high incidences of cardio heart disease, and Surry Hills has influenza. And this comes down to your suburb and what they did with the research was to find that there are differences, according to where you live to determine your health profile.

M: So, what you’re saying Pete is, you live up the hill from me, when we’re in Sydney.

P: Mmm hmm.

M: You could have high instances of diabetes in your area and I could have high instances of flu in my area.

P: Exactly.

M: Why?

P: It comes down to the access that we have in terms of where we live. The neighbourhoods that we have. It can also come down to a wealth distribution as well. We’ve talked before about money distribution –

M: So, money makes you healthier?

P: – being part of the factors of access to happiness. Money buys happiness, yes?

M: Money buys access to happiness.

P: There we go, laugh. So, in the same way, money buys access to health, healthy actions, healthy eating, healthy lifestyle choices.

M: So, if you can afford to buy organic that’s going to benefit you.

P: Mmm. Absolutely. To eat healthfully is more expensive than to eat unhealthily in the current Western society.

M: Yep, absolutely.

P: Okay, so if we go down the rabbit hole with this, doctor’s Glover talks about the quintiles and that Australia is divided into five quintiles of advantage and disadvantage. So, the quintile number one is 61% and above, quintile number five is 44% and below in terms of income, equality and wealth equality. Now –

M: Sorry, backtrack, backtrack, not following.

P: Okay, back it up. Laugh.

M: 65% are in the first of five quintiles?

P: No, in terms of wealth, wealth, inequality in Australia.

M: Yep.

P: So, if you’re in the top quintile, you’re 61% and above. If you’re in the bottom line, you’re 44% –

M: 61% of what?

P: Of wealth distribution. Income earning, basically.

The top income earners are 61% above the average median, whereas the low-income earners are 44% below.

P: Still not following?

M: What does that have to do with quintiles?

P: That’s got to do with… he’s classifying these quintiles for advantage and disadvantage. This comes back to the health factor. Keep coming with me. Keep coming down the rabbit hole.

M: Yep.

P: I know it’s a long, long process, laugh.

M: Yep.

P: So, it got me thinking in terms of health, correlation to happiness, can suburbs make a difference to our happiness levels? Where we live, does that impact our happiness? The answer is yes, laugh.

M: Absolutely. Well, we’ve already drawn the conclusion before or shown that the research and drawn the conclusion that physical health impacts your mental wellbeing and therefore your happiness. So, yeah, this is really interesting.

P: And mental well-being is a real term.

M: Yeah.

P: Yeah. So, I went further down the rabbit hole, and I found some publications by Helen L. Berry from the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University. And she cites certain characteristics of areas that are highly concentrated in terms of sharing health-damaging factors. And some of the things that she came out with, I won’t read them all, but I highlighted a few.

One was including pride in one’s home, and home as a refuge.

And this comes back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and feeling secure. It also comes back to the UN sustainable goals of being secure in your house.

M: And also the research that we showed, you know, once you’ve got the basic needs met, which in countries like Australia and Ireland there are very, very, very, very small proportion of people who don’t have that.

P: Mmm.

M: Generally, your homeless population only, which is a small percentage.

P: Mmm.

M: But the pride in the home piece we’ve explored as well with how your immediate environment can impact your mood and wellbeing. So just putting some plants in and making sure you have watered them, not let them die.

P & M: Laughter.

M: I have to keep remembering that, laugh. [It] can make a difference to, you know, your mood, your lighting, all of those things.

P: Definitely.

M: I’m really interested though Pete, to understand if you are not earning as much as the people around you. But you live in the crappiest house on an expensive street, whether you get the health benefits that everyone else around you gets or whether it is truly tied to money income only?

P: I’m probably not the person to answer that, but I’m going to I’m going to make an attempt. I would say that it is tied to income only because of the sense of control.

M: Ok. So, it’s got nothing to do with where you live. It’s just that where you live correlates to how much income you have.

P: That totally takes my argument in the opposite direction.

M & P: Laugh!

P: I wouldn’t say that it is actually.

M: It is your show! Your rabbit hole!

P: Laugh. Yeah, you’ve taken a sidebar ‘like Whoa!’

M: Laugh.

P: I think that there is a certain factor of where you live that does impact on your happiness levels, and that comes down to the environment.

M: Yeah.

P: And one of the things that Berry talks about is the cleanliness of environment. So, we know that neighbourhood areas that are well kept that looked after by the local community have a sense of care at a sense of pride, and that correlates with what she’s talking about in terms of the characteristics of highly concentrated areas that don’t have health-damaging characteristics.

M: And I’m going to bail you out a little bit here.

P: Laugh.

M: I asked a question that I know the answer to.

P & M: Laugh!

M: There is a fabulous article in Ms magazine, which is titled Want to Make Your Country Happier? – Elect Women.

P: Ahh.

M: Yes, and it talks about how certain nations come out year, year on year as more happy in the World Happiness Report.

P: Mmm.

M: And those nations have higher levels of government spending on human infrastructure. And so, taking that down to the suburb level. These are the suburbs that probably have public libraries, community centres, parks that are well kept, good roads without potholes, nice areas where people can gather and be social, all of those things with the good infrastructure.

P: Yes, exactly.

M: They may also have female mayors.

P: That would be interesting to look at, at the data.

M: Laugh.

P: I wonder if we can search out and find some of those stats that that would be really interesting. And I’ve come across that as well in terms of the female quotient of leadership. And there’s a fabulous series on ABC, which is a national broadcaster here in Australia at the moment called Ms Represented and it’s hosted by Anitta Crabb –

M: Ah, Anabelle Crabbe.

P: – and, oh sorry, Annabelle, my apologies. But FABULOUS series. Really interesting.

M: It’s great.

P: I’ve liked the first ten episodes and yeah, worth a look if you’re going down that road. Um, bringing it back, if we can bring it back to your point exactly about the environment, Marie and how they impact [health and happiness]. Berry states that exposure to clearly visible symbols of poverty and degradation send powerful messages that nobody cares about the neighbourhood or its residents. This has a direct correlation to mental health.

M: Yep, absolutely.

P: So, characteristics that generate direct health risks, such as:

• Facilitating spread of disease,
• Discouraging physical activity, and
• Negative health behaviours.

[These] can be reduced by:

• An increased perception of community involvement,
• [Good] health,
• Pleasant surroundings.

M: Safety.

P: Yeah.

M: So, if you feel that you’re safe in your neighbourhood and can walk around or go to the park or meet people in local areas and enjoy the space, you would get out more.

P: Absolutely. Yeah. There was a study done by Dalgard and Tambs published in the British Journal of Psychology where they studied 503 people in Oslo in Norway and their mental health issues were declining initially in poorly functioning neighbourhoods. This improved over a decade after they were shifted into slightly more encouraging neighbourhoods with [better] environmental factors. It did take 10 years, but science says that it had a decrease in psychiatric morbidity.

M: There are, I was just, I was doing some research for my book, and I can’t even remember the name of the city anymore. There’s a city in South America that is held up as the shining example of good investment in infrastructure, and they turned around their city from being one of the most crime riddled cities in the world to being a tourism hub with great world class universities.

P: Mmm.

M: And it was all due to, I think, we’ve spoken before about the 15 minute city?

P: Yep.

M: It was due to investment in infrastructure and gardens and ponds and bringing wildlife back into the city, creating trees for birds and all of those fabulous things, you know, fixing graffitied walls and cleaning that up. And all of the things that we’re talking about.

P: Mmm, yeah. We talked about that before in terms of Vancouver. Vancouver did that as well.

M: I think quite a few cities. Well, France. Paris is definitely one of the city’s that’s held up as a model for the 15 minute city, they’ve done a lot of work. London’s doing a lot of work on that, Melbourne as well.

P: Mmm.

M: A lot of big cities are including Vancouver, I’m sure.

P: Mmm, yeah. Reclaiming the space and turning it by changing your environment, you can actually directly impact your mental health and thus your happiness levels.

M: Another great example is Singapore, and one of the things I noticed when I visited Singapore was it is so dense it is denser than Sydney. I don’t know how dense it is compared to New York, but I imagine it’s pretty similar. They’ve run out of space. They can’t go into New Jersey.

P: Laugh.

M: Like New York can. They’ve only got a tiny little island for their country, and every single inch of it is planned and built on. However, every block has a certain amount of land that is, that must go towards green gardens, so you’ll find these beautiful big skyscrapers with a whole lot of beautiful gardens as part of the entryway and foyer area. Whereas we would build all the way to the sidewalk here.

P: Mmm, yeah.

M: So, our concrete jungle is truly a concrete jungle, whereas a far more densely packed city like Singapore, just looks really green. When you walk around it, it’s beautiful.

P: Yeah. That comes down to city planning and architecture design.

M: Yeah, yep and prioritising that over more buildings.

P: Yeah, density of population.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: Ah, we’re going to run out of time. So, I’m going to quickly bring this back to what can you do if you’re living in a disadvantaged area about [your] happiness levels?

M: Ahh.

P: So, what are some practical things to do? And I’ll come back to the original discussion that we had with Helen Berry.

• Invest in your community.
• Make some gardens.

It can be as simple as creating a little laneway garden in the back-alley way if you can get the community to be a part of the environment and bringing that up. We saw this with the rise of graffiti artists in places like New York and San Francisco, where all of a sudden, they were being employed to do their graffiti art and the community was involved.

M: Yes.

P: So, that encourages social connection, which we know has a huge impact on our happiness. And even if you can just make that slight change. As the study in Oslo showed, it’s enough to tip the balance in your favour coming back to what we talked about before Marie in terms of looking at your home de-cluttering the whole, what was it, Mariko? What was her name? [Click, click]

M: Marie Kondo.

P: Marie Kondo yeah! Laugh. The Marie Kondo effect.

M: De-cluttering, yep.

P: And getting rid of those what they call psychosocial stresses, enabling yourself to be part of – to eliminate social instabilities, things that are distressing to you. Try and minimise those in the home.

M: I think that’s a really good point, because if you don’t have a lot of money a lot of times… And when I was in UNI, I was a lot more materialistic. When you don’t have and you see other people around you who have more than you, I found that I used to buy stuff I didn’t need a lot more often than I do now when I have a full-time job and I’ve been saving for a number of years.

P: Mmm.

M: And now I’m really finding the mental health benefits of being a bit more minimalistic in what I have in my home.

P: Mmm.

M: You have to clean or dust or look after as much. And it’s much easier to come home to a house that you can be proud of that isn’t cluttered.

P: Mmm. And you could also invite other people into which, again, that increases social connection.

M: Yep.

P: Yeah. So, in summary, we’re going to wrap it up. Looking after the social environment and the physical environment around you and in your local area is actually a real key to happiness. So, if you’re not happy with your current neighbourhood environment, maybe this is your chance to do one activity to try and bring that into a better space or an easier space for you to be a part of where you can experience better happiness.

M: What I love about we’ve spoken about tonight is that you can take control.

P: Mmm.

M: So, if you are in lockdown right now, a lot of things have been taken out of our control. So, particularly with working out of your own home, minimalising, decluttering or bringing some greenery in, you can control all of that right now and then maybe when we’re out of lockdown or if you’re not in lockdown currently, getting a crew together to work on your neighbourhood is such a valuable and joyful thing to do.

P: Yeah, very much so. And on that note, have a happy week.

M: Bye.

[Happy exit music – background]

M: Thanks for joining us today if you want to hear more, please remember to subscribe and like this podcast and remember you can find us at www.marieskelton.com, where you can also send in questions or propose a topic.

P: And if you like our little show, we would absolutely love for you to leave a comment or rating to help us out.

M: Until next time.

M & P: Choose happiness.

[Exit music fadeout]

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