New research by the UK's University of Warwick and Hamilton College in the US into the happiness levels of a million individual US citizens have revealed their personal happiness levels closely correlate with earlier research that ranked the quality of life available in the US's 50 states plus the District of Columbia. This research provides a unique external validation of people's self reported levels of happiness and will be of great value to future economic and clinical research in this field.
The new research published in the 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.
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 is measured. This provided a league table of happiness by US State reproduced below.
One pattern: sunnier places are happier. But one can find exceptions: Darker winter Alaska and Maine are happier. Sunny California is near the bottom of the happiness ranks. California's glory days were ruined by too much population growth and too much immigration. It is now a high tax, high living cost, crowded, and decaying state with low social capital. Also, Republican-leaning states are happier than Democratic-leaning states. Though again there are exceptions. Also, states with lower costs of living are happier. Yet Hawaii is in 1st place.
Andrew Oswald/ Wu ranking of happiness levels by US State
- Louisiana
- Hawaii
- Florida
- Tennessee
- Arizona
- Mississippi
- Montana
- South Carolina
- Alabama
- Maine
- Alaska
- North Carolina
- Wyoming
- Idaho
- South Dakota
- Texas
- Arkansas
- Vermont
- Georgia
- Oklahoma
- Colorado
- Delaware
- Utah
- New Mexico
- North Dakota
- Minnesota
- New Hampshire
- Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Oregon
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Nebraska
- West Virginia
- Kentucky
- Washington
- District of Columbia
- Missouri
- Nevada
- Maryland
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- Massachusetts
- Ohio
- Illinois
- California
- Indiana
- Michigan
- New Jersey
- Connecticut
- New York
I'd really like to see a map that breaks happiness down by county. How do rural, suburban, and city life compare? How much does crime lower happiness? How does happiness track by race or IQ or income?
By Randall Parker at 2009 December 19 04:06 PM Human NatureDifferent polling source, has a map by congressional district: http://www.ahiphiwire.org/wellbeing/
Fascinating stuff. Choose "life evaluation" from the list to see what would be classified as a "happiness" or "life satisfaction" ranking.
Seems that low land prices+semidecent climate+low "HBD" are the ticket. F and H obviously are outliers.
Oh, you should know I wasn't able to see the window to input the cap until I swiched to firefox. Tried and failed to post a bunch of times in IE.
Even more than being rightish, they are hick states, with no great cosmopolitan cities of commerce and politics. Those that arent hick are just way out of the way (Hawaii). The exception is Florida, but the power elites in Florida are retired ones. The highest power state is Virginia, and at #28 it is below average. And you dont get to another power state until Washington at #36, and then DC just after it. In states 40-51 you see almost all the great universities. If you take the Ivies plus Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Berkeley, and maybe UVA and UCLA, virtually all of them are in states 40-51.
Personally I like the country and its people over the city, and would much rather live in the no-power zone, say Montana or Maine.
Since a lot of sociologists focus on community and family in happiness, though I dont know whether its import is really proven, we might consider the mobility of elites. Imagine modeling from Boston to Frisco, or NYC to Chicago, as something that often increases the happiness of the person doing it while decreasing that of the friends and family from their place of origin. Not all elites necessarily make a net gain from moving, but posit that 1/3 do.
> The highest power state is Virginia
The highest-ranking on this list, that is, not the one that is highest in power.
Which is not to say that it doesnt rather have high power; only DC, Maryland, California, and NY can begin to compete with it.
If Louisiana ranks so high, this might be due to New Orleans, which is an entertaining place. You just need to avoid the crocodiles.
Incidentally, the film "Bad Lieutenant" is about New Orleans, and this is the best Nicholas Cage movie:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bad_lieutenant_port_of_call_new_orleans/
Louisiana may be happiest due to their lack of hypocrisy and Yankee puritanism: "Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez."They expect their politicians and preachers to be liars, thieves and whoremongers-who nevertheless are peasant clever enough not to petition DC to please send them Somali refugees . Kind of the anti-Minnesota.
Also Louisiana whites must be happier because they clearly don't give a damn what the outside world thinks of them: they gave David Duke 55-60% of their votes in two successive statewide elections. This also makes life less stressful for La blacks who therefore don't have to put with hordes of sniveling, spineless cowards in white skin.