If you're unhappy where you are, you can pick up and move. Thanks to a new study, we now know where all those happy people live.
Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index asked more than 353,000 Americans to find out the happiest ... and the unhappiest cities in the United States:
"Most of our highest-scoring cities are found out West and most of our lowest-scoring cities are in the South," says research director Dan Witters. Wealthier communities typically score higher.
Residents of large cities — those with a population of 1 million or more — generally report higher levels of well-being and more optimism about the future than those in small or medium-sized cities. In small cities, at 250,000 or less, people are more likely to feel safe walking alone at night and have enough money for housing. [...]
Nine of the 10 cities that fare best on "life evaluation," assessments of life now and expectations in five years, boast a major university, a big military installation or a state Capitol — institutions that presumably provide some insulation from recession.
Overall, the top 10 cities include four in California, two in Utah and one each in Colorado and Hawaii. Of them, only the Holland, Mich., and Washington, D.C., metro areas are located in the Eastern or Central time zones.
Many of the bottom 10 are in economically embattled regions. Three are in the Alleghenies and three in the Rust Belt. Only Shreveport, La., and Modesto, Calif., are west of the Mississippi.
The 10 happiest cities are:
1. Boulder, CO
2. Holland-Grand Haven, MI
3. Honolulu, HI
4. Provo-Orem, UT
5. Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA
6. Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-Goleta, CA
7. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
8. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
9. Ogden-Clearfield, UT
10. Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA
... and the 10 unhappiest cities are:
153. Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent, FL
154. Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, NC
155. Shreveport-Bossier City, LA
156. Evansville, IN-KY
157. Kingsport-Bristol, TN-VA
158. Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA
159. Flint, MI
160. Charleston, WV
161. Modesto, CA
162. Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH
Curious that they combined Holland and Grand Haven, they're near each other, but not like twin cities or anything.
Holland is very nice, right near Lake Michigan, very clean and well taken care of.
Flint is horrible. Tons of crime and poverty, it's a dying city.
Portland itself is certainly in my top ten places.
This survey must be old because everyone around here is pissed lately because of the amount snow. I bet suicide rates are even up.
Please stop cutting and pasting the errors of the original article. It makes you look like you don't think for yourself.
The reason they combined with Holland is that someone obviously wanted to plump up the city in the stats. Holland uses Muskegon, MI as the place to dump its poor and minority (non-Dutch) people in West Michigan. In many other surveys Holland and Muskegon are linked as one area.
Take the half hour commute to Muskegon sometime, Dave, if you think that West MI is better than the East part of the state.
Muskegon has a WORSE crime rate than Flint and it is only the fact that most of the citizens of Muskegon can commute to work in Holland or Grand Rapids that prevents Muskegon from being in the bottom ten. That and the fact that Flint isn't on the the big lake.
Also doesn't West Michigan also host St. Joseph?, Benton Harbor? Dowagiac? South Haven?
All of these cities and Muskegon had worse crime rates than Flint in 2009.
I meant to include Fruitport and not St Joseph on that list.
Statistically speaking, money can buy happiness. Or at least it can pay misery to go somewhere else.
They do survey only a select group of people from those towns, so your only gauging the mental state of the individuals doing it, and not the general consensus of that town. Apparently they were the fattest city in the US last year, so maybe it's the same depressed and overweight people on welfare that stay at home all day doing the survey just as last year.
Lived in San Antonio, TX and Dallas. Then Wichita, KS, and on to central
Florida. Baltimore, Indianapolis, and then to San Diego and San Francisco.
I travel extensively in my job and have been to every major city in the
lower 48 and several in Canada, Europe, and New Zealand. I see too many
people praising the "greatness" of their respective cities but they have
never been any where else. How can you know if some place is better or
worse - if you have never been any where else ?? I make my home in
Denver, Colorado - and if I didn't live here - I would pick Portland, OR.
San Francisco was nice but pricey - can't say anything really nice about
any of the other cities. Each had some good points but not enough to
make me want to live there as a permanent resident
people praising the "greatness" of their respective cities but they have
never been any where else. "
Amen.
I missed my calling to be a professional emo kid, I really did.
And yes, both places are pretty miserable.
1)Jobs are extremely rare to come by and employers are happy to fire you at the drop of a hat just for fun.
2)Highest sales tax in the country
3)The city squeezes every dime out of you possible for revenue (state is broke. Ridiculous procedures for everything with very little reward (heaven help you if you ever have to deal with building inspectors).
4)The most surely and lazy post office customer service and transit workers you've ever seen. And they're all fat!!!
5)Oppressive winters that last 8 full months.
6)Overpaid and corrupt, machine politicians run the joint and there's nothing you can do about it.