FREMONT — Stressed out? You might want to consider moving to Fremont.
The fourth-most populous city in the Bay Area recently topped WalletHub’s list of least-stressed cities in the United States.
Analysts with the personal-finance website recently compared the 150 largest cities across 30 key metrics, including average weekly work hours to debt load to divorce and suicide rates.
The divorce rate in Fremont was the lowest at 11.8 percent, or 3.5 times lower than in Cleveland, the city with the highest divorce rate at 41.5 percent, according to the study.
Councilman Raj Salwan said Fremont’s low divorce rate might have something to do with its large Asian population — more than 50 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“Marriage is highly valued,” he said. “I think everybody wants to keep their families together.”
Fremont also had the highest median credit score and the second-lowest poverty rate, according to the study.
Newark — the city in New Jersey, not Fremont’s neighbor to the west — was the most stressed, according to the study. The dubious distinction was a result of it having the second-lowest median credit score (Detroit was No. 1) and the fourth-lowest average hours of sleep per night.
From most stressed to least stressed, Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose ranked 67th, 99th and 138th, respectively, according to the study. San Francisco and Oakland, however, joined New York City as the top three cities with the least affordable housing.
No surprises there, really.
San Jose, meanwhile, had the third-lowest divorce rate and was in the top third of cities with the lowest percentage of adults in fair or poor health, according to the study.
The study to determine the most- and least-stressed cities was conducted in response to a rise in U.S. stress levels, mainly due to the current political climate, according to WalletHub, which also reports workplace-related stress alone carries an annual price tag north of $300 billion.
Fremont City Manager Fred Diaz said he takes such studies with a grain of salt. In this case, he was pleased with the results — something he attributed to the city’s prosperity — but he wondered if the study should have given more weight to commute times and stress.
“Traffic and the quality of education here are big issues now, and they’re going to continue to be, and they’ll get better, but I think it’s going to be up and down,” Diaz said. “But over the course of time, how we urbanize and how we grow and take care of those problems, will be very influential I think to how happy and de-stressed people are here.”
Staff writer Joseph Geha contributed to this report.
