Three years ago we wrote a blog post about a survey of 10,000 French adults asking them about their level of satisfaction with where they were living. Nearly 80% of the respondents declared themselves “happy” and almost half of those were “very happy”. Now a different company has undertaken a similar study with an indication of where within the country you might find the most contentment. On average, that “happiness quotient” has increased to 86% with the region of Bretagne at the top and our own Occitanie right behind. Let’s look at some additional parts of the country and find out what makes an area attractive.

There’s a stereotype of the French being somewhat negative or critical and even in some of my language courses there have been references to this attitude. There are common phrases such as “there’s nothing that we can do about it” or the seemingly understated “not bad” that can actually convey a range of positive meanings, from “quite good” to “very good” or even “excellent,” depending on the context.

With that as a background when I read the following headline regarding this latest survey, I was expecting bad news, “90% of employees would be ready to change regions”. In reality it was saying that the majority of the French were open to living elsewhere in the country because they felt that they could be happy in many other places within France.

If they were to move to a new location, half of the people would prefer a rural town of under 20,000 people. Everyone, however, would find these same points important, in order:

• Quality of life
• Geography/environment
• Housing
• Transport
• Employment/training dynamism
• Regional economic development

As we said in the first paragraph, the regions of Bretagne and Occitanie top the list as “most attractive”, based on the survey respondents’ evaluation of those 6 points mentioned just above. The following regions, listed in that “happiness quotient” descending order, are represented by their largest cities:

• Nouvelle-Aquitaine: Bordeaux
• PACA (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur): Marseille
• Normandy: Rouen
• Pays de la Loire: Nantes
• Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes: Lyon
• Centre-Val-de-Loire: Tours
• Bourgogne-Franche-Comté: Dijon
• Grand Est: Strasbourg
• Hauts-de-France: Lille
• Île-de-France: Paris

We are not looking to move but it is encouraging to know that we could find other happy residents no matter where else within France we might choose to look.

Sources: Thank you to Connexion France for mentioning the study that was conducted by Odoxa.

Photo notes: All of today’s photos are in Bretagne (Brittany). Across the top is the port of Le Bono and in the first paragraph is the village of Rochefort-en-Terre.