According to a recent survey by the Gallup Organization, people who live in large metro areas demonstrate a higher level of health and general well-being than their small-town counterparts. Across six domains of wellbeing, only in the Work Environment domain do inhabitants of small towns and rural areas have scores superior to their counterparts who live in big metro areas.

For instance, in the well-being composite score, city dwellers hit 66.7 to rubes’ 64.2, a difference of 2.5. On the Life Evaluation domain, it was sophisticates 48.6 to goobers’ 40.1, or a whopping 8.5 difference. On the all-important issue of physical health, metros scored 78.0 to 74.1 for the hicks — a difference of 3.9.

Gallup sums it up like this:

Leaders of large metro areas should take notice that wellbeing is not only as attainable in big cities as it is in small towns; it is in fact higher on average. With this realization comes greater urgency for low-performing cities to address head-on deficiencies in wellbeing among the citizenry of their municipalities. Residents living in small towns and rural areas, in turn, should recognize that quieter, calmer settings do not necessarily translate to better wellbeing, and they should make more aggressive efforts to overcome lower overall performance.

I, on the other hand, see it this way: Fellow metro dwellers prepare to defend your well-being, your health and your higher standard of living from the hordes of sick, depressed hillbillies who will come flooding through the gates of our emerald city to bring us down to their level. We must be prepared to fight off the torch- and pitchfork-toting mobs of tubercular, pasty-faced Faulkner characters with our high-tech weaponry, leaving them steaming lumps of protoplasm on the verges of our magnificent superhighways and artful overpasses.

Sorry, Trish — Jon and I win!