ST. TAMMANY, La. – A new study shows roughly 70 percent of people on the Northshore are satisfied with their overall qualify of life.
The results of the Southeastern Louisiana Univerity Quality of Life Study for the Florida Parishes were released Wednesday.
Residents of five parishes were surveyed: St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Washington, Livingston and St. Helena. There were not enough responses from St. Helena Parish to have a statistically significant sample, but those responses were used to calculate overall numbers.
In terms of overall quality of life, 74 percent of people in Livingston Parish responded they are satisfied or very satisfied overall. The response was 71 percent in St. Tammany and 68 percent in Tangipahoa, but significantly lower in Washington Parish at 44 percent.
"Washington Parish does have a lot of social problems," said Dr. Bonnie Lewis. "They have economic problems that really showed up on this survey."
Dr. Lewis is sociology professor at Southeastern, and the director of the school's Social Science Research Center. According to Lewis, the responses from Washington Parish differed greatly from the responses from the rest of the Florida Parishes.
The top issues in Washington Parish are unemployment, crime and poverty.
"They have a real problem developing businesses because people don't tend to go up that way unless you live there,” Lewis said.
For the other Florida Parishes, the top issues are traffic, over-population, the loss of forested areas and parish planning.
"Public citizen participation in planning was rated very low is one of the weakest areas," Lewis said, "so governments can involve the people more."
Lewis said that's one of the pieces of information political leaders can learn from in the report. Roughly half of all people responding said the quality of life has gotten worse in the past three years.
Public education scored very high in St. Tammany and Livingston Parishes, and much lower in Tangipahoa and Washington.
