The Happiest States In The USA

[Sionnach Glic]

New research by the UK's University of Warwick and Hamilton College in the US has used the happiness levels of a million individual US citizens to discover which are the best and worst states in which to live in the United States. New York and Connecticut come bottom of a life-satisfaction league table, and Hawaii and Louisiana are at the top. The analysis reveals also that happiness levels closely correlate with objective factors such as congestion and air quality across the US's 50 states.

The new research published in the elite journal Science on 17th December 2009 is by Professor Andrew Oswald of the UK's University of Warwick and Stephen Wu of Hamilton College in the US. It provides the first external validation of people's self-reported levels of happiness. "We would like to think this is a breakthrough. It provides an justification for the use of subjective well-being surveys in the design of government policies, and will be of value to future economic and clinical researchers across a variety of fields in science and social science" said Professor Oswald.

The researchers examined a 2005- 2008 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System random sample of 1.3 million United States citizens in which life-satisfaction in each U.S. state was measured. This provided a league table of happiness by US State reproduced below. The researchers decided to use the data to try to resolve one of the most significant issues facing economists and clinical scientists carrying out research into human well-being.

Researchers have to rely on people's self declared levels of happiness - but how can one trust those self declarations? There have been studies that try to match declared levels of happiness to clinical signs of stress such as blood pressure. That has been useful, but one cannot know for sure whether those physiological signs are driving happiness or whether the reverse is true. Researchers have, for decades, longed for a more clearly external scientific check on, and corroboration of, well-being survey answers.

The two researchers stumbled on a parallel approach that allowed them to do such a check. They discovered research by Stuart Gabriel and colleagues from UCLA published in 2003 which considered objective indicators for each individual State of the USA such as: precipitation; temperature; wind speed; sunshine; coastal land; inland water; public land; National Parks; hazardous waste sites; environmental 'greenness'; commuting time; violent crime; air quality; student-teacher ratio; local taxes; local spending on education and highways; cost of living. This allowed the creation of a rank order of US states showing which should provide the happiest living experience. This was a truly external data source that could be used to check the self declared levels of happiness; Gabriel's team had no happiness data in 2003 that could allow the check to be completed.

But Professors Oswald and Wu were able to do the first state-by-state USA happiness calculations. They then obtained Gabriel's numbers. When the two rankings were compared, they found a close correlation between people's subjective life-satisfaction scores and objectively estimated quality of life.

The lead author on the study, Professor Andrew Oswald from the University of Warwick, said:

"The beauty of this statistical method is that we are able to look below the surface of American life -- to identify the deep patterns in people's underlying life satisfaction and happiness from Alabama to Wyoming. The type of study is new to the United States. We are the first to be able to do this calculation -- partly because we are fortunate enough to have a random anonymized sample of 1.3 million Americans. But we could not have done it without the early painstaking work by Gabriel's team."

"The state-by-state pattern is of interest in itself. But it also matters scientifically. We wanted to study whether people's feelings of satisfaction with their own lives are reliable, that is, whether they match up to reality -- of sunshine hours, congestion, air quality, etc -- in their own state. And they do match. When human beings give you an answer on a numerical scale about how satisfied they are with their lives, you should pay attention.

People's happiness answers are true, you might say. This suggests that life-satisfaction survey data might be tremendously useful for governments to use in the design of economic and social policies." said Oswald.

Professor Oswald expressed caution in how some of the exact results should be interpreted - for example, for the state of Louisiana in the survey following the disruption in caused by Hurricane Katrina, but was confident that the data on most states was a true reflection of well-being levels saying:

"We have been asked a lot whether we expected that states like New York and California would do so badly in the happiness ranking. Having visited and lived in various parts of the US, I am only a little surprised. Many people think these states would be marvellous places to live in. The problem is that if too many individuals think that way, they move into those states, and the resulting congestion and house prices make it a non-fulfilling prophecy. In a way, it is like the stock market. If everyone thinks it would be great to buy stock X, that stock is generally already overvalued. Bargains in life are usually found outside the spotlight. It seems that exactly the same is true of the best places to live."
1 Louisiana
2 Hawaii
3 Florida
4 Tennessee
5 Arizona
6 Mississippi
7 Montana
8 South Carolina
9 Alabama
10 Maine
11 Alaska
12 North Carolina
13 Wyoming
14 Idaho
15 South Dakota
16 Texas
17 Arkansas
18 Vermont
19 Georgia
20 Oklahoma
21 Colorado
22 Delaware
23 Utah
24 New Mexico
25 North Dakota
26 Minnesota
27 New Hampshire
28 Virginia
29 Wisconsin
30 Oregon
31 Iowa
32 Kansas
33 Nebraska
34 West Virginia
35 Kentucky
36 Washington
37 District of Columbia
38 Missouri
39 Nevada
40 Maryland
41 Pennsylvania
42 Rhode Island
43 Massachusetts
44 Ohio
45 Illinois
46 California
47 Indiana
48 Michigan
49 New Jersey
50 Connecticut
51 New York

Pretty interesting results.

[Aaron]

Louisiana is #1? Really?

Wasn't a good part of it obliterated by a hurricane and the remnants left to rot by the Federal Government?

[Vic]

Arizona's number fiiiive, does that mean that I'm happy?

[Tyyr]

South Dakota is number 15? What the fuck do they have to be happy about? Seriously? I lived there, it's God's forgotten country.

Ha! New York sucks!

[Sionnach Glic]

Louisiana is #1? Really?

Wasn't a good part of it obliterated by a hurricane and the remnants left to rot by the Federal Government?

I think the survivors are all just happy they're still alive.

Anyone else find it odd how the states that are usually seen as being rural and sparsely populated are all near the top?

[Tyyr]

Not in the least.

[Vic]

Ha, man is a social animal.........but not that social!

[Angharrad]

South Dakota is number 15? What the f**k do they have to be happy about? Seriously? I lived there, it's God's forgotten country.

Ha! New York sucks!

Everybody should leave then!

**looks around**

Didn't work.

[sunnyside]

Louisiana is #1? Really?

Wasn't a good part of it obliterated by a hurricane and the remnants left to rot by the Federal Government?

I was a bit surprised as well. On the other hand, I suppose there is something to be said for drowning and/or shipping off to other states the disenfranchised part of the population. Pennsylvania would leap up in the rankings with some selective flooding in Phily.

Anyone else find it odd how the states that are usually seen as being rural and sparsely populated are all near the top?

Nope. First off all because I'm used to seeing states like that do well in other quality of life sorts of studies. But also because those places typically have more focus on confident self sufficiency and family, and they also largely lack the horrid slums of larger urban areas.

More relevantly to what this guy was studying, I'll believe that congestion matters. Driving in Iowa and Montana is actually fun. Driving in Minnisota....is strange but nice. Driving in Phily slowly turns you into a sociopath.

[Sonic Glitch]

More relevantly to what this guy was studying, I'll believe that congestion matters. Driving in Iowa and Montana is actually fun. Driving in Minnisota....is strange but nice. Driving in Phily slowly turns you into a sociopath.

There's no "slowly" about it. As soon as you hit the Schuylkill ExpressWay, any concepts of morality go out the window.

[Lazar]

I was a bit surprised as well. On the other hand, I suppose there is something to be said for drowning and/or shipping off to other states the disenfranchised part of the population. Pennsylvania would leap up in the rankings with some selective flooding in Phily.

They also have the highest incarceration rate in the country, about five times that of Maine. And based on these data, Louisiana has the 2nd highest infant mortality rate, the 5th highest violent crime rate, the 2nd highest percentage of people below the poverty level, and the 2nd highest number of traffic fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles (who knew?). They also have the 2nd lowest life expectancy of any state, and the Commonwealth Fund ranked them 39th on combined health care indicators. And they're 9th in unemployment. I imagine they have some advantages that derive from their warm climate and low(ish) population density, but by most hard standards they're one of the most troubled and underperforming states.

[sunnyside]

And they're 9th in unemployment.

Um, you may have understood that statistic backwards. They have the ninth LOWEST unemployment.

[Lazar]

Um, you may have understood that statistic backwards. They have the ninth LOWEST unemployment.

Sorry, you're right. But they still have very high poverty.

[sunnyside]

Um, you may have understood that statistic backwards. They have the ninth LOWEST unemployment.

Sorry, you're right. But they still have very high poverty.

For many of the other stats, based on the dates, I think they may be convoluted with or Pre Katrina, which certainly had a large impact on the state.

I suspect that the state got a boost both from who was shipped out to other states and also from those who were left being a whole lot more appreciative of what they have.

And traffic deaths per mile driven might actually have the opposite effect on happiness. Personally I'd rather take my chances doing 75mph through the curves of Minnisota than be doing the much "safer" 5mph game of chicken that is driving on the Schuylkill Expressway


Hmm, *looks around for unemployment data*

Here we go.


As you can see, prior to the recession, the unemployment levels were significantly lower post Katrina. Hence why such a historically troubled state is now ninth best.

I suspect you'd find similar results for some of the other stats. I.e. if you found current poverty info instead of the pre and Katrina era numbers you referenced, I suspect they would stack up much better compared to other states.

[stitch626]

used the happiness levels of a million individual US citizens to discover which are the best and worst states in which to live in the United States.

So this is a bogus test because that is not a valid sample data.

There are more people than that in New York City.