Thread: Happiest States Revealed by New Research

Happiest States Revealed by New Research

Jeanna Bryner
Managing Editor
LiveScience.com jeanna Bryner
managing Editor
livescience.com – Thu Dec 17, 2:05 pm ET
Ever wondered if you'd be happier in sunny Florida or snow-covered Minnesota? New research on state-level happiness could answer that question.


Florida and two other sunshine states made it to the Top 5, while Minnesota doesn't show up until number 26 on the list of happiest states. In addition to rating the smile factor of U.S. states, the research also proved for the first time that a person's self-reported happiness matches up with objective measures of well-being.


Essentially, if an individual says they're happy, they are.


"When human beings give you an answer on a numerical scale about how satisfied they are with their lives, it is best to pay attention. Their answers are reliable," said Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England. "This suggests that life-satisfaction survey data might be very useful for governments to use in the design of economic and social policies," Oswald said.


The happy-states list, however, doesn't match up with a similar ranking reported last month, which found that the most tolerant and wealthiest states were, on average, the happiest. Oswald says this past is based on raw averages of people's happiness in a state, and so doesn't provide meaningful results.


"That study cannot control for individual characteristics," Oswald told LiveScience. "In other words, all anyone has been able to do is to report the averages state-by-state, and the problem with doing that is you're not comparing apples with apples because the people who live in New York City are nothing like the individuals living in Montana."


Rather, Oswald and Stephen Wu, an economist at Hamilton College in New York, statistically created a representative American. That way they could take, for example, a 38-year-old woman with a high-school diploma and making medium-wage who is living anywhere and transplant her to another state and get a rough estimate of her happiness level.


"Not much point in looking at the happiness of a Texas rancher compared to a nurse in Ohio," Oswald said.


The happiest states:


1. Louisiana
2. Hawaii
3. Florida
4. Tennessee
5. Arizona
6. Mississippi
7. Montana
8. South Carolina
9. Alabama
10. Maine


The scientists caution, however, that the top spot, Louisiana, might not reflect current levels of well-being since the data were collected before the disruption caused by Hurricane Katrina. They are confident that data for the other states does accurately reflect happiness levels.


See the full list of 50 states (and the District of Columbia) here.


Happiness measures


Their results come from a comparison of two data sets of happiness levels in each state, one that relied on participants' self-reported well-being and the other an objective measure that took into account a state's weather, home prices and other factors that are known reasons to frown (or smile).


The self-reported information came from 1.3 million U.S. citizens who took part in a survey between 2005 and 2008.


"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," Oswald said.


The results showed the two measures matched up. "We were stunned when it first came up on our screens, because no one has ever managed to produce a clear validation before of subjective well-being, or happiness, data," Oswald said.


They were also surprised at the least happy states, such as New York and Connecticut, which landed at the bottom two spots on the list.

"We were struck by the states that come at the bottom, because a lot of them are on the East Coast, highly prosperous and industrialized," Oswald said. "That's another way of saying they have a lot of congestion, high house prices, bad air quality."

He added, "Many people think these states would be marvelous 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."

Would you be happier in another state?

Using both the subjective well-being results, which included individual characteristics like demographics and income, and the objective findings, the team could figure out how an individual would fare in a particular state.

"We can create a like-to-like comparison, because we know the characteristics of people in every state," Oswald said. "So we can adjust statistically to compare a representative person hypothetically put down in any state."

This new research will be published online on Dec. 17 by the journal Science.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/...dbynewresearch

Good analogy.

Me

Originally Posted by SHELBYDOG

Happiest States Revealed by New Research

The scientists caution, however, that the top spot, Louisiana, might not reflect current levels of well-being since the data were collected before the disruption caused by Hurricane Katrina. They are confident that data for the other states does accurately reflect happiness levels.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/...dbynewresearch

How old is the data? Katrina was a few years ago.

Turns out, sunshine states really are happiest

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Randolph E. Schmid, Ap Science Writer – Fri Dec 18, 1:52 am ET
WASHINGTON – People in sunny, outdoorsy states — Louisiana, Hawaii, Florida — say they're the happiest Americans, and researchers think they know why. A new study comparing self-described pleasant feelings with objective measures of good living found these folks generally have reason to feel fine.

The places where people are most likely to report happiness also tend to rate high on studies comparing things like climate, crime rates, air quality and schools.

The happiness ratings were based on a survey of 1.3 million people across the country by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It used data collected over four years that included a question asking people how satisfied they are with their lives.

Economists Andrew J. Oswald of the University of Warwick in England and Stephen Wu of Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., compared the happiness ranking with studies that rated states on a variety of criteria ranging from availability of public land to commuting time to local taxes.

Probably not surprisingly, their report in Friday's edition of the journal Science found the happiest people tend to live in the states that do well in quality-of-life studies.

Yet Oswald says "this is the first objective validation of 'happiness' data," which is something he says economists have been reluctant to use in the past.

"Very loosely, you could say that we prove that happiness data are 'true,' — such data have genuine objective informational content," he said.

"Moreover," Oswald added, "it is interesting to uncover the pattern of life-satisfaction across one of the world's important nations."

Ranking No. 1 in happiness was Louisiana, home of Dixieland music and Cajun/Creole cooking.

Oswald urged a bit of caution in that ranking, however, noting that part of the happiness survey occurred before Hurricane Katrina struck the state, and part of it took place later. Nevertheless, he said, "We have no explicit reason to think there is a problem" with the ranking.

Rounding out the happy five were Hawaii, Florida, Tennessee and Arizona.

At the other end of the scale, last in happiness — is New York state.

As if to illustrate the problem, residents attending a meeting Wednesday in rural Queensbury unleashed their anger and cynicism at a state government they described as corrupt, self-dealing and too quick to increase taxes. It was a tirade that had one lifelong resident saying he was ready to flee "this stinkin' state."

Oswald suggested the long commutes, congestion and high prices around New York City account for some of the unhappiness.

He said he has been asked if the researchers expected that states like New York and California, which ranked 46th, would do so badly in the happiness ranking.

"I am only a little surprised," he said. "Many people think these states would be marvelous 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."

Besides being interesting, the state-by-state pattern has scientific value, Oswald explained.

"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, etceteras — in their own state. And they do match."

Oswald and Wu used data from CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System collected from 2005 to 2008. The survey, launched in 1984, collects information on a variety of health measures.

The research was supported by Britain's Economic and Social Research Council.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091218/...5zb3V0c3Vucw--