It sounds like a laughable generalization: How can living in any one state make you “happier” than than living in another? There are miserable people everywhere you go, whether it’s Hawaii or West Virginia. On an individual level, happiness is an abstract concept that can mean different things to different people. Measuring the happiness of a city, a state, or an entire country seems like an even more futile undertaking.
But certain factors like crime, unemployment, average commute time, and cost of living often can have a huge influence on the happiness of an entire population. Just like a state’s suicide rate or number of heart attacks can give useful insights into the well-being of its residents.
Personal finance website WalletHub looked at all this data and more for its study ranking the 50 states and the District of Columbia in order of happiness. Released Monday, it took into consideration 28 metrics—from a state’s obesity rate to its number of hedonistic Facebook posts—and gathered data from sources like the U.S. Census Bureau, Centers for Disease Control, Gallup-Healthways, and Hedonometer.org to get a well-rounded view of how each state stacks up.
Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want, told the Daily Dot in an e-mail that she believes it’s “extremely useful” for states to look at well-being indicators of its people, and not just economic indicators such as GDP and unemployment rates.
“If policy makers care about their constituents actually being happy, then they need to consider these [well-being indicators] and look at what correlates with them. Of course, that doesn’t mean that we can establish causal paths from such studies (we have to do actual experiments for that), but we can draw some tentative conclusions,” said Lyubomirsky.
But she also cautioned that in some cases the differences in well-being between states can be statistically meaningless. For instance, with Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota (all midwestern states with low populations), the difference in the rankings is as little as a fraction of a point.
So debate, roll your eyes, or call a U-Haul. Here are the top 10 happiest states in America, according to WalletHub.
10. California
Iowa’s easy to underestimate, but its low long-term unemployment rate is promising. Residents of Iowa also sleep well, eat well, and are less likely to be divorced.
6. Idaho
North Dakotans ranked themselves highly in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Satisfaction index survey. You’re also likely to never go hungry there. North Dakota’s rate of food insecurity is the lowest in the country.
2. Minnesota
Why is Utah the happiest state in the union? The state has the lowest divorce rate, the highest volunteerism rate, and the lowest number of work hours in the nation.
Here are how the rest of the states panned out in the ranking:
11. New Hampshire
12.Washington
13. Wyoming
14. Vermont
15. Wisconsin
16. Massachusetts
17. Connecticut
18. District of Columbia
19. Delaware
20. New Jersey
21. Virginia
22. Montana
23. Maryland
24. Kansas
25. Illinois
26. New York
27. Rhode Island
28. Alaska
29. Texas
30. North Carolina
31. Arizona
32. Oregon
33. Maine
34. Pennsylvania
35. Florida
36. Nevada
37. Georgia
38. South Carolina
39. Ohio
40. Indiana
41. New Mexico
42.Missouri
43.Michigan
44.Oklahoma
45. Tennessee
46. Louisiana
47. Arkansas
48. Mississippi
49. Kentucky
50. Alabama
51. West Virginia
