Do you live in a miserable city?
What makes a city miserable? Do you live in one of the most unhappy places in Missouri or Kansas? The website RoadSnacks organized information from the Census and dug deep into what they consider the most unhappy/miserable cities.
Recent polls reported in the news say that a third of Americans say they are truly happy. With an economy that continues to struggle and news media that seems to focus only on the negatives, it may be no wonder.
So along comes this ranking that tries to make sense of it all. After analyzing the largest cities, the website created a list of most miserable cities starting with THE most miserable community listed at the top.
For Missouri, Wellston was the most miserable and in Kansas it was Kansas City.
How do you decide if a city is miserable?
Now while the criteria used did not include spiritual health (which is a great determining factor), it isn’t a stretch to assume that happier people might not worry about money, are relatively stress free, and have a stable home life.
The Census’s American Community Survey 2010-2014 report for the criteria, flipped the list, and it spit out the answer. Like magic.
The organization threw a lot of criteria at this one in order to get the best, most complete results possible:
- Level of education
- Average commute times
- Unemployment rates
- Cost of living
- Percent of married couples
- Percent of home owners
- Poverty rate
An interesting anecdote about the rankings. It appears that the more married couples and more homeownership a community has, the more happy its inhabitants seem to be. It could be that those are two of the most stable components of modern civilization and are seen as the best environment for raising a family.
After they decided on the criteria, RoadSnacks gathered the data for the 180 places in Missouri with over 2,000 people and 105 places in Kansas.
They then ranked each place from one to 180 for each of the seven criteria with a score of one being the most miserable (Any ties were given to the larger place).
Next, they averaged the seven rankings into a Index for each place with the lowest overall Miserable Index “earning” the title “Most Miserable City In …”.
Metro Voice took the rankings and created a list of communities surrounding Kansas City with some Kansas and Missouri towns outside the area thrown in for comparison.
Where does your city rank?
KANSAS (Note: #1 means most “miserable”, #105 is most happy)
Rank Population % Homeowner % Married
Kansas City 1 147,598 50.6 40.7
Osawatomie 2 4,403 59.9 36.3
Lawrence 5 90,194 42.2 35.0
Atchison 7 10,920 59.4 37.4
Topeka 12 127,660 50.9 43.6
Wichita 16 385,518 54.2 47.7
Leavenworth 22 35,738 44.2 47.5
De Soto 23 5,888 51.6 51.6
Merriam 37 11,191 51.2 45.9
Edwardsville 42 4,367 66.2 48.6
Mission 52 9,451 46.3 41.6
Bonner Springs 53 7,420 61.7 53.6
Garden City 54 26,924 58.8 51.8
Oswego 55 2,018 66.3 53.0
Tonganoxie 59 4,802 53.1 58.9
Paola 62 5,589 61.1 57.2
Lansing 65 11,535 72.2 47.8
Lenexa 66 49,573 58.8 55.5
Overland Park 71 178,945 60.9 55.5
Louisburg 72 4,313 63.9 61.0
Spring Hill 74 5,618 72.0 62.8
Gardner 76 20,128 65.6 61.1
Roeland Park 78 6,799 69.3 42.6
Olathe 80 129,913 68.6 59.1
Shawnee 86 63,597 69.2 57.7
Prairie Village 99 21,730 75.8 56.9
Basehor 100 4,831 76.6 62.7
Leawood 103 32,842 90.4 69.7
Mission Hills 105 3,555 95.5 72.0
MISSOURI (Note: #1 means most “miserable”, #180 is most happy)
Rank Population % Homeowner % Married
Wellston 1 2,010 20.6 12.1
Branson 22 10,942 20.2 44.5
Springfield 23 162,333 42.6 37.4
Riverside 25 3,023 26.2 36.9
Kansas City 28 465,005 47.4 40
Grandview 33 24,860 50.1 42.5
Harrisonville 34 10,019 54.7 44.4
Warrensburg 51 19,548 38.4 35.2
Richmond 55 5,702 45.7 45.8
Independence 58 117,160 57.9 45.9
Belton 72 23,197 58.5 49.9
Excel. Springs 77 11,391 59.1 46.3
Oak Grove 100 7,747 57.0 52.7
Raytown 101 29,520 62.5 46.1
Gladstone 113 26,032 63.0 48.7
Pleasant Hill 118 8,173 64.0 56.6
Liberty 126 29,806 70.5 53.4
Grain Valley 128 13,037 59.3 54.7
Blue Springs 133 53,053 65.4 54.8
Greenwood 146 5,322 87.7 61.5
Parkville 148 5,811 66.8 56.8
Lee’s Summit 153 92,813 71.6 59.2
Smithville 154 8,791 78.7 61.6
Kearney 156 8,845 66.9 58.4
Raymore 163 19,576 78.4 59.0
Ladue 180 8,549 92.2 69.0
