The Wall Street Journal reported last week that suburbanites are actually healthier than people who live in either the city or in rural areas.

For many urban dwellers, the country conjures up images of clean air, fresh food and physical activities. But these days, Americans residing in major cities live longer, healthier lives overall than their country cousins—a reversal from decades past.

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To be sure, city dwellers live with more air pollution and violent crime. They also have higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases and low-birth-weight babies and are more likely to drink excessively. But overall, urbanites tend to rate their own health more highly and are less likely to die prematurely than rural Americans, according to the county rankings report.

In many measures, residents of suburban areas are the best off. They generally rate their own health the highest and have the fewest premature deaths than either their urban or rural counterparts. Suburbanites also have the fewest low-birth-weight babies, homicides and sexually transmitted diseases.

The emphasis is mine, gloriously mine!  How about that?  Live in the city, and you’re more likely to drink excessively (very true, in my experience), and you’re less healthy from all the air pollution.

Move to the suburbs, though and you reduce your chances, according to the article,  having low-weight babies, getting murdered, and getting the pox.  That’s a pretty good tradeoff off for lousy Thai food, amirite???

Not that moving the suburbs has helped me at all, frankly.  That is, I have not gotten a sexually transmitted disease or been murdered or had a low-weight baby, so that’s good.  But it’s not like I’m exercising more than I did when I lived in the city, which is to say that I did virtually no exercise back then and I’ve continued that rigorous campaign now in the suburbs.  The only change is that I haven’t joined a gym yet, so my lack of exercising is free, a nice change from the city, where not-exercising at my local Crunch cost me like $75 a month.  I’ve put that $75 savings into more cigarettes and booze.

But just from reading that article, I feel healthier already….