Are you young, female, well-educated, in a job, and live in a big city in a rich EU country? If you answer yes to all these questions, you're probably among people who are most satisfied with your life. But even if you are without a job and an education, you're probably more satisfied with your life if you live in a larger city in a Nordic EU country than people in the same situation in other EU countries. That's according to a new study that compared groups of citizens in 25 EU countries, and asked how satisfied they are with their lives.

"There are quite large and interesting differences between Nordic and other EU countries, in how satisfied different groups of the population actually are," says Professor Fredrik Carlsen at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

He and Statistics Norway researcher Stefan Leknes are the authors of a recent study entitled "Who are satisfied with life in cities? Evidence for 25 European countries".

The study shows that if you are young, single, well-educated, and have a job, you are more likely to be satisfied with your life if you live in a larger city than in a smaller city or town. People who have less education or are unemployed think life is best outside the big cities. Women who live and work in the major cities of the richest EU countries are among those who are most satisfied with their lives.

Sweden, Finland and Denmark come out better than other EU countries when it comes to how satisfied people are with life where they live. The elderly, women, couples with children and people who have less education or are unemployed are relatively better off in the Nordic EU countries.

Similarly, the negative consequences of unemployment and challenges related to age, housing situation and the like are less in the Nordic region. One possible explanation is that welfare states that function well make it possible to live everywhere and at the same time have a reasonably good standard of living.

Another is the system of wage negotiations in the Nordic region. Trade unions, employers and authorities seek to safeguard all groups – including low-paid and less educated people.

Single women with more education are the group that has benefited most from the development in the big cities over time.

"We see that, relative to other groups, women who often work in low-wage occupations, the unemployed and people without education are more satisfied with life in the Nordic countries than in other EU countries. In general, it is also better to live in the largest cities here than in the rest of the country," says Carlsen, who works at the Department of Economics.

The disadvantages of major EU cities, such as cramped housing, high housing prices, crime, pollution and noise, are not as problematic in the Nordics.

Nevertheless, while the Nordic EU countries are better at lifting up groups with a lower standard of living, single people aren't as well taken care of in the Nordics, Carlsen says.

We already know that in general, living with a partner is better than living alone. People in the Nordic countries who live as couples are clearly extra satisfied with their lives.

"This means that we can find one group that loses, and that is single people. In contrast to countries further south in Europe, lonely people and people without close family easily end up on the outside in the Nordics. That is a challenge," Carlsen said.

He emphasizes that this is the only study result that shows that the Nordic equalization mindset doesn't work and makes the region comparatively worse off than other EU countries.

The NTNU study is one of an increasing number of research publications on happiness and how satisfied people are with life. Every year, the University of Oxford, Gallup and the United Nations publish the World Happiness Report. It analyses data on people's well-being from 140 countries. The purpose? To give everyone more knowledge about where people are happiest, and how we can create more happiness for ourselves and others.

These studies use people's responses to how satisfied they are with their lives to measure happiness and standard of living. Leknes and Carlsen have added a new twist: Data on place of residence were analysed alonh with data from the EU barometer 2010-2019. That database includes citizens from 25 countries. More than 50,000 respondents over the age of 15 per country are included, bringing the data to over one million people.

They use the answers to investigate important questions in economic geography: Where is the best place to live, for whom? Are people more satisfied with life in larger or smaller cities, or in the countryside? And what differences are there in perceived quality of life between gender, age, marital status and family affiliation in different countries? Previously, the two have looked at Norway, and found that Oslo differs clearly from the rest of the country. Young people with a higher education are relatively more satisfied with life in the capital, while older people with a low level of education are more satisfied outside Oslo. Now the researchers see the same pattern for the EU.

When it comes to gender, enthusiasm for the big city is linked to the country's income level," says Carlsen, who emphasizes that the researchers looked at development trends between groups in each country.

"Our theory is that industry in cities in rich countries has declined. Thus, there are fewer and fewer traditional male jobs. Look at Oslo, there are almost none of these kinds of jobs left. When a country becomes richer, occupations that were formerly and traditionally male have been replaced by service industries," Carlsen said..

When jobs become less centred on physical work that was typically male dominated, new opportunities open up for both genders. Single women with higher education are the group that has benefitted the most from the development in the big cities over time, according to the NTNU professor.

But again, that doesn't mean they're happier than other people.

"It just means that they have benefitted positively in some of these countries from this de-industrialization. In countries that are not so rich, the phasing out of urban industry has lagged a little behind.

Many surveys use few variables to explain people's views on city life versus rural life. Carlsen and Leknes have gone deeper. To find out why people prefer one aspect of their live over another, the researchers took into account characteristics such as age, gender, marital status, education and unemployment in their analysis.

The researchers say this is the first time a study like this has included all these variables at the same time.

For example, "if you have a partner, you also often have children. But if you as a researcher only include one of these variables in a study, you cannot know whether you will find the effect of having a partner, or of having children. If you include both, the information you get is increasingly more correct," Carlsen said.

In general, all countries' governments have a goal of equalizing living standards. They do this by targeting measures at groups that are struggling.

"Everything that explains people's standard of living and living is important," says Carlsen.

"The results of surveys like ours say something about how society is developing. Whether there are moves the authorities should stop, things they should be aware of. But these developments won't necessarily be the same in larger cities as in other areas," he said.

Of course, it's not just gross domestic product and welfare systems that make countries different. Culture, class differences, industry all come into play. And values such as trust in others, loyalty and law-abiding vary greatly – even within the EU.

Cities vary in size, living conditions, social differences, pollution, travel distances, and so on. The researchers point out that more research should be done on what it is that affects how satisfied citizens are with their lives.