You Probably Don’t Live in the Most Optimistic Place in America
Provo-Orem, Utah is the nation's most optimistic metropolitan area, according to the results of a Gallup poll released earlier this week. This could explain why Provo-Orem, Utah just doesn't "get" your cynical, Big City humor.
The rankings were based on survey responses from 353,492 adults across the United States, who were asked whether they felt their city or area was "getting better as a place to live."
The least optimistic city in the United States—the Daria to Provo-Orem's Brittany—is Binghamton, New York.
76 percent of those polled in Provo-Orem responded favorably to the question of their city's improvement. In Binghamton, that figure was less than 28 percent.
It's not clear from the results of the Gallup poll exactly what makes the population of a particular metropolitan area optimistic. While Provo-Orem has a below-average unemployment rate of 5.3%, McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas, which came in at number 10 on the list of most optimistic places, has an above average unemployment rate of 11.2%.
Provo-Orem, the location of Brigham Young University, has a large Mormon population or, perhaps more accurately, a very, very small non-Mormon population.
McAllen-Edinburg-Mission has the highest obesity rate in the country.
To each his own.
