America's Most Stressful Cities-gctid30964

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America's Most Stressful Cities

In these spots, residents suffer from high prices, high unemployment and low quality of life.

By Maurna Desmond for Forbes.com

The crisis on Wall Street has New Yorkers alarmed. But it's nothing compared to the levels of anxiety those living in the Windy City feel each day.
 Chicago's rising unemployment rate, expensive gas, high population density and relatively poor air quality create a perfect storm of stress, according to measures we used to calculate the country's anxiety hot spots.
 New Yorkers can relate. Locals in the country's most densely packed metro have to fiercely compete for subway seats, cabs, apartments, elite preschools, dinner reservations and bartenders' attention. This constant grind compounds the area's other anxiety factors including costly housing (the country's third least affordable) and allergy-inducing pollution. Throw in Wall Street's woes, and you've got a Molotov cocktail of concern.
 In Pictures: America's Most Stressful Cities
 Detroit, Mich., Los Angeles, Calif., and San Francisco, Calif., ranked third, fourth and fifth, respectively.
 Behind the numbers
 To find them and others, we examined the country's 40 largest U.S. Census–defined metropolitan statistical areas and looked at quality of life indicators. We tracked housing affordability based on the August 2008 National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo housing opportunity index and unemployment rates for the same month based on data provided by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. We also worked cost of living into our ranking by factoring in the price for one gallon of gas on Sept. 4 per a daily survey conducted by insurance company AAA.
 But consumers aren't fretting
 
 America's Most Stressful Cities - Page 1 - MSN Health & Fitness - Health Topics