Commuting makes you unhappy

By N.B. | LONDON

LONG COMMUTES are terrible. But you already knew that. I had a long commute once, for less than a year. It was tolerable at first—I did a lot of sleeping on the train. But as veteran commuters know, a commuter train isn't the best place to sleep—and unless you can sleep standing up, you had better make sure you get on first. Even the snoozing didn't help me in the end—I eventually developed back problems from how I was sleeping. That put an end to that. Nowadays my commute to work is around 20 minutes—and zero if I work from home.

Why do I bring this up? Slate's Annie Lowrey had a great piece late last month rounding up the best research on the effects of commuting on human health and happiness. The article is pegged to Swedish researchers' discovery that a commute longer than 45 minutes for just one partner in a marriage makes the couple 40% more likely to divorce. But Ms Lowrey ends up running through the whole litany of traditional commuter complaints—that it makes us fat, stresses us out, makes us feel lonely, and literally causes pain in the neck—and finds research to prove that the moaners are, more often than not, right. "People who say, 'My commute is killing me!' are not exaggerators," she concludes: "They are realists." So why do we do it? Here's Ms Lowrey:

The answer mostly lies in a phrase forced on us by real-estate agents: "Drive until you qualify." Many of us work in towns or cities where houses are expensive. The further we move from work, the more house we can afford. Given the choice between a cramped two-bedroom apartment 10 minutes from work and a spacious four-bedroom house 45 minutes from it, we often elect the latter.

For decades, economists have been warning us that when we buy at a distance, we do not tend to take the cost of our own time into account. All the way back in 1965, for instance, the economist John Kain wrote, it is "crucial that, in making longer journeys to work, households incur larger costs in both time and money. Since time is a scarce commodity, workers should demand some compensation for the time they spend in commuting." But we tend not to, only taking the tradeoff between housing costs and transportation costs into question.

It's important to realise that while many people with jobs in cities feel like they absolutely must have a house with a big yard, it still is a choice—one with serious consequences for their health and well-being. I don't begrudge the citizens of the exurbs the choices they've made. (Kids and housing prices, even post-crash, can make urban living a trickier proposition for some.) It's just not a choice I find attractive. Ever since my long-commute days, I've been willing to sacrifice living space and housing comfort for a shorter commute.

I'm not tempted to go back. The continued revitalisation of many American inner cities and their inner-ring suburbs suggests some of my peers feel the same way. My father has spent decades with two-hour-plus commutes each way to and from work, and I see how much energy they suck out of him. Anyone feel differently, or willing to take the risk for a nice house in the country? Let us know in the comments.