Sexy Beast
More Sexy BeastBest (And Worst) Cities to Find Love
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Valentine’s Day is Sunday, but Cupid plays favorites with where he aims his arrows. The Daily Beast measures America’s 104 largest cities, to find the best, and worst, places to find a mate.
In every major city there are massive amounts of single people out there, says Janis Spindel. But it’s tough to find love. She should know: she makes her living from that fact, running a top matchmaking firm.
Forget the romantic notion of destiny. The clinical way to defy the mate-hunting odds, as Spindel can testify, boils down to one thing: location. With Valentine’s Day approaching, The Daily Beast thought it would quantify that part of the love equation, by examining and then ranking the 104 largest American cities, according to which are most conducive to finding, and keeping, a spouse.
We entered every U.S. city with more than 200,000 people into our computers, then dumped in data surrounding five criteria:
- Singles ratio: The larger the percentage of singles, 18-and-over, according to U.S. Census data, the bigger the relative pool for finding the perfect mate.
- Social life: Using Citysearch, we determined a social life quotient—how many restaurants and bars there are per over-21 adult, as a proxy for meeting opportunities.
- Emotional Health: Studies show that happy people are more open to love. So we ranked cities based on the the Gallup-Healthways Emotional Health Index, based on thousands of questionnaires where respondents described how much they smile and laugh, whether they are treated with respect, whether they find enjoyment, get stressed, feel happy, etc. Cities in milder climes tended to fare better here, skewing those cities higher on rankings.
- Marriage ratio: Is a given city marriage-minded? To determine, we measured the percentage of people who got married in 2008, as a percentage of overall marriage-aged population. Greensboro, North Carolina, for instance, ranked in the top quintile for the percentage of singles, but it ranked toward the bottom for marriages, earning a D.
- Divorce ratio: It’s one thing to get married. True love means you stay married. So we measured 2008 divorces as a percentage of marriage-aged population. Stockton, California, which received an A grade for marriages, finishing in the top quintile, also received an F for divorces, ranking third from last on our list. Riverside, California, meanwhile, notched an A in both categories, placing it seventh overall.
These rankings are universal, designed to be neutral in relation to gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or age. The only thing that matters is if you’re looking for love. If so, read below to see how your city fared.
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MatKen
I'm not an expert on the subject, but seeing Santa Ana, Anaheim and Riverside high on this list makes me think there might be a flawed methodology.
Katethedem
No Kidding. But apparently fun in the sun makes for good lovin'. Can't complain too much met my love in Mission Viejo, lived in San Deigo.
MatKen
Kate you made me think back and I met my wife in Costa Mesa, lol. Probably 2 streets from the Santa Ana border! It was at work and neither of us lived there, but maybe this is spot on. However I dont recommend desperate singles flock to these areas looking for love.
ronald64
As an OC boy, Fountain Valley HS and UC Irvine alumnus, my reaction was also no way! The dead giveaway to flawed methodology is Riverside. Hope you iike smog. Especially appreciate Long Beach (OC border) as #1. Does that count the large gay community? This ranks right up there with the worst commutes study that doesn't include the 405 and the 101. Haha! Time to hit the vaporizer...
GREGORYABUTLER
One problem with this survey is the term "single" - what does it mean, exactly?
In an age where lots of folks delay marriage - in some cases, permanently - what does "single" actually mean?
There are lots of folks in long term committed relationships who are, technically, unmarried, although as a practical matter they might as well be.
This is especially true in places like Manhattan, where 75% of the population is unmarried.
And let's not forget our friends in the LGBT community - this study totally disappears them, because in most of the country they CANNOT marry their partners!
There are other problems here too.
There are places, like Norfolk, VA that have a lot of nominally single people because they are the home to large military bases.
Norfolk is the home of the Second Fleet of the US Navy, as well as several large Army and Virginia National Guard bases - in other words, there is a large transient population of unmarried teenagers and young adults who are military personnel stationed there.
This would tend to skew the statistics on how many "single" people there are there.
In other words, this report is profoundly flawed.
However, the study's biggest flaw is the writers 1950's assumption that everybody's goal is to get married and that is the test of "true love".
I think they need to rethink this list - and I hope nobody uses it as a way to find love.
hockeydog
The methodology is flawed due to the omission of
the STD ratio; the herpes index, the clymadia influence,
the gonorrhea factor, and the AIDS inclination, not to mention
the syphillis resurgence co-efficient.
scott1607
Re: methodology -- not to mention that they measured social life by the number of restaurants and bars. No wonder Orlando and Tampa got such good grades there. I'm sorry, just because these cultural garbage dumps have too many Chili's and Macaroni Grilles does not mean they have much of a "social" life!
janet1003mn
Note to anyone heading to Minneapolis for luuuuuv:
J P American Bistro is closed -- it's a high-end sports bar now...and unlikely to heat up most romances.
keemia
Note to writers: the link to Naraya in Los Angeles tried to attack my computer.
keemia
Not surprised that Los Angeles isn't the best city for love, but Santa Ana in the top 3??
I'm actually not too surprised by Riverside at #7. People there are super right leaning religious types, so they look for marriage and stay married.
Shelley Greenman
I don't think that being around a bunch of married people is especially romantic, so I don't understand why that's a metric.
I also don't understand why Santa Ana and Anaheim can receive As for "Singles" and "Marriage," as they would appear to be inversely related.
sfsmurf
Long Beach, Santa Ana, Anaheim, Riverside, Irving, Garland.....
I'd rather stay single forever than live in one of those places.
andygirl
Wow. Three California cities which I've lived in and can attest to the lousy dating scene. Why don't they look at the types of singles that live there? Could be those places are good for hooking up and not for finding a future partner.
Angela Henry Turner
Julie you were right. There it is at #104...Lexington Ky. The worse city to find love. Now where am I going move to next. lol
theorygirl
A couple of points:
-Economists who have studied the marriage market have found that the majority of people who get married didn't meet without some previous connection, e.g. a mutual friend or the same employment or university. Despite what sitcoms portray, you only have about a %10 chance of meeting your spouse randomly somewhere like a bar. So the mere presence of lots of bars might not be a great measure of the marriage qualifications of a city. As andygirl says, bars are good places for hooking up, not for finding marital bliss.
-Also, divorce--really? You can't determine how likely a marriage is to end by comparing the number of weddings in the same year with the number of divorces in the same year. Those aren't the same people. The actual way to calculate the divorce rate (either national or of a given area) is to compare the data for the number of people who have ever been married with the number who have ever been divorced. Also, doing that comparison nationally for the period in which the data was kept (starting in the early 20th century) shows that divorce has a strong generational correlation--divorces peaked in the 70s and 80s and have been on the decline ever since, and today's young people are actually less likely to get divorced than the previous generation. It would be useful to know who is getting divorced, rather than just the number or percentage of divorces.
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ScottSpiegel
How can these rankings be "neutral in relation to... sexual orientation" when two of the five criteria are Marriage Ratio and Divorce Ratio?
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