A viral research study led by Rababe Saadaoui, a PhD planning student in Arizona State University's School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, has uncovered a link between car dependency and life satisfaction in the United States.
I have to say, as much as I want to hype up the headline, the other user is correct. The graph in the article shows that people who use a car for <5% of trips are quite unhappy, while everyone else has roughly the same happiness level, within 0.1 happiness points (whatever that means). Given the auto oriented nature of the US, we can assume the people using cars very infrequently are doing so not because they live in walkable areas, but because they cannot afford a car.
So really all the study shows is that it sucks to be poor.
I have to say, as much as I want to hype up the headline, the other user is correct. The graph in the article shows that people who use a car for <5% of trips are quite unhappy, while everyone else has roughly the same happiness level, within 0.1 happiness points (whatever that means). Given the auto oriented nature of the US, we can assume the people using cars very infrequently are doing so not because they live in walkable areas, but because they cannot afford a car.
So really all the study shows is that it sucks to be poor.