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A recent study suggested that our first instincts as humans is to work collaboratively and its when we think that we begin to think for ourselves. The animal side of us wants us to work with other's to help each other out; but the human side of us is, in its most basic form, egocentric.

This human part of us desires to live with people like us, associate with people like us, segregate our selves from people who are, where it always does but should never count, unlike us.

But researchers say that if we broke down these barriers we construct out of nothing more than self interest, we may be living happier and fuller lives.

According to a new study released in yesterday's issue of of Science, researchers from the University of Chicago posit that neighborhood income segregation had a greater impact than neighborhood racial segregation, though nowadays it's tough to distinguish the difference:

"This finding is important, in part, because racial segregation has been trending down since 1970, but income segregation has gone up steadily since then," said lead author Jens Ludwig, the McCormick Foundation Professor of Social Service Administration, Law and Public Policy at UChicago and director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. "So the problem of adverse neighborhood effects on low-income families seems to be getting worse, rather than better,

Researches found that focusing on just income disparities between neighborhoods understates this inequality with respect to happiness. The researchers estimate that the drop in happiness of low-income adults due to growing residential income segregation since 1970 is large enough to offset the full income growth for low-income Americans over the past four decades.

While the flight from higher-poverty income neighborhoods to less poverty stricken areas does not have an affect on the actual incomes of the families who move, their mental and physical well-being increased by an amount equivalent to the gains caused by a $13,000 rise in wealth.

Researchers used data from a large-scale randomized social experiment called the Moving to Opportunity, a program which allowed 4,604 low-income families living below the poverty line in high-poverty neighborhoods to enter a housing lottery that would offer some families the chance to move, all expenses paid, to a lower-poverty area. This lottery took place in cities where the economic discrepancies between classes were the most dramatic such as Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.

Moreover participants were largely African-American and Hispanic single mothers who participated in the opportunity to move away from the violence and seedy dealings that are often associated below-poverty level neighborhoods.

After 10 to 15 years researchers assessed the outcomes of such a move.

They found that many of the children of the mothers, most of whom did not complete highschool, not only finished their high school education but most went on to pursue a college degree. The families were happier and felt safer, proving that the effects of fiscal mobility has little to do with the money made but the neighborhoods (schools, neighbors and opportunity's) associated with the move.

"These findings suggest the importance of focusing on efforts to improve the well-being of poor families, rather than just the narrower goal of reducing income poverty, and the potential value of community-level interventions for achieving that end," Ludwig said.