WalletHub, a personal finance website that offers many tools and research data to enhance finance fitness (including free credit scores), just released its latest list of America’s Happiest Cities.
Using the usual data generating suspects (US Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Gallup-Healthways, etc., WalletHub focused on three subsets of happiness determinants.
With a weight of 50 points, Emotional and Physical Well Being included but was not limited to such things as life satisfaction, depression rate, suicide rate, adequate sleep rate, physical health index, sports participation, illness and disability index and life expectancy rate.
The subset of Income and Employment Rate, 25 points, looked at things such as income growth rate, job satisfaction, unemployment rate, etc. The Community and Environment subset, 25 points, included but was not limited to the strength of social ties, average leisure time per day and separation/divorce rates.
Here are the Top 20 Happiest Cities in America in 2018:
(Check out how many happy cities are in California!)
- Fremont, CA
- Bismarck, ND
- San Jose, CA
- Pearl City, HI
- Plano, TX
- Fargo, ND
- Sioux Falls, SD
- Irvine, CA
- Huntington Beach, CA
- Grand Prairie, TX
- Madison, WI
- Columbia, MD
- San Francisco, CA
- Scottsdale, AZ
- Overland Park, KS
- Santa Clarita, CA
- Glendale, CA
- Oakland, CA
- Paul MN
- Gilbert, AZ
