Social Sciences · Sociology and Political Science
A study of Syrian refugees in the Netherlands finds that the ethnic makeup of the region where they were housed influenced whom they came to know. These effects on social contacts remained after five years, while the region’s level of urbanization showed no clear effect.
Rural U.S. counties expressed higher life satisfaction, while urban counties expressed greater momentary happiness, according to an analysis of 2.6 billion geolocated tweets from 2014 to 2022. The findings suggest that where people live may relate differently to reflective judgments about life and to day-to-day feelings.
A systematic review of 18 quantitative studies found that responsiveness was the governance practice most consistently associated with public trust in local governments. Transparency and formal accountability had more conditional relationships, with service delivery, perceived performance and effectiveness helping shape how people judged local authorities.
