Andrés Rodríguez-Pose (@rodriguez-pose.bsky.social)

European cities converge in life satisfaction, but by a bleak route. @crhistianjoel.bsky.social shows in Economia Politica that, while there has been convergence in #LifeSatisfaction, it is because once-happy cities have slipped & within-city inequalities have risen doi.org/10.1007/s408...

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Do European cities converge in life satisfaction? - Economia Politica This study examines whether life satisfaction across European cities is converging over time, and what individual and contextual factors underlie this process. Drawing on four waves of the Quality of Life in European Cities survey (2012–2023) and more than 70 cities across Europe, it applies the beta and sigma convergence framework to subjective well-being at the city level, complemented by multilevel ordered logistic regression models. The findings confirm evidence of convergence in which cities with lower initial life satisfaction grew faster, while higher-performing cities stagnated or declined, yielding an annual convergence speed of approximately 2.4%. However, this between-city convergence conceals a simultaneous rise in within-city inequality, which has become the dominant driver of overall disparity by 2023. The multilevel analysis further reveals that life satisfaction is strongly structured by sociodemographic characteristics and, over the years, has decreased some group-based differences across education, gender, and household type. These findings challenge optimistic readings of convergence in European cities, showing that they are becoming more similar on average but more unequal within. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40888-026-00412-6