December 19, 2009
by Elias Shams
What the hell! We are down the list as 37th happiest State/City?
A new study I just read on Live Science ranks Washington, DC as the 37th happiest city in America and Alaska is #7? I wonder what type of criteria they used to make such conclusion.
They claim the results are based on an examination of two data sets, one that included personal reports of happiness for 1.3 million Americans and the other that included objective measures, such as how crowded that state is, air quality, home prices and other factors known to impact quality of life.
Interestingly, the states with the highest educational standards and mandatory regulations like DC and NY, are at the bottom of the happiness scale. Perhaps “ignorance” knows something more than the rest of academia suspects. So, I guess, it does make sense to be happy when you accept life, rather than added stress in fighting for a living, or stress of big city living.
Other thing I don’t get, how the heck Louisiana became #1? Last time I checked, Louisiana is an economically depressed state with a lacking education system.
Anyway, here are their complete ranking of 50 U.S. states and our DC in order of their well-being:
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
Filed under About DC
Tagged with . Michigan, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, awesome dc, California, city, Colorado, Connecticut, DC, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, happiest city, happy, happy city, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Live Science, livescience.com, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, US, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, washington, washingtonian, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming
The administration awarded $3.4 billion to nine states and Washington, D.C. in a national competition to encourage school reform that spurred far-reaching changes in many cash-starved states.
Elias Shams
Kamran Abdi
Tatiana Sorabi
