Theoretically, Minneapolis-St. Paul should be one of the least stressed metro areas in the nation. Portfolio magazine picked factors that they believe influence people's stress levels, such as the local crime rates, unemployment, cardiovascular disease, air quality and annual number of sunny days. They gathered data from 50 metro areas, and ranked the cities according to levels of stress factors.
Salt Lake City came in top as least stressed city, Virginia Beach-Norfolk was second, and Minneapolis-St. Paul came in third. Relatively low unemployment, good health and air quality helped put us high on the list, despite the half-year of gloomy Minnesota winter.
Sounds great! And when you consider the most stressed cities, according to Portfolio's methodology, include Detroit with high crime and unemployment, and congested, expensive New York, it seems like they may be right. However, the Portfolio study is only of factors that may influence stress, and didn't survey any city residents to find out how stressed they actually were.
So is Minneapolis-St. Paul as chilled out as Portfolio claims? Are you a oasis of calm or actually a ball of stress?
A Sperling study from a few years ago was based on several similar statistics to the Portfolio study, but also included mental health data from actual residents of the cities surveyed, divorce rates, and included an indicator of the ultimate price of stress - suicide rates. The Sperling study placed Minneapolis fourth on their list of least-stressed cities, agreeing with the Portfolio study. Stress happens everywhere, and everyone's situation is influenced by factors beyond the calculation of any magazine survey, but it does seem that Twin Cities residents are a little less stressed than the average citizen.
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