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The Street

Samanda Dorger

The Happiest and Unhappiest Cities in America

ND (Geopolitical Entity) Calif Depression WalletHub Fremont Tesla Inc.

Happiness is both simple and complicated.

Aristotle said, “Happiness depends upon ourselves.” Gretchen Rubin, author of “The Happiness Project,” discovered during her one-year project that sometimes happiness can come from making other people happy.

But what makes some cities happier than others? Researchers have worked hard to find the magic formula, and of course there probably isn’t one, but a few key themes rise to the top, including subjective well-being, quality of life, community, mental and physical health, security, economics and environment.

To determine the happiest cities, WalletHub compared 182 of the largest cities — including the 150 most populated U.S. cities, plus at least two of the most populated cities in each state — using three criteria:

emotional and physical well-being, which includes depression and suicide rates, sleep rates, life expectancy, food insecurity and sports participation;
income and employment, which includes poverty, unemployment and bankruptcy rates, income growth, job satisfaction, commute time and work hours;
community and environment, which includes weather, divorce rate, hate crimes, well-being index, amount of parkland and leisure time.

Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing maximum happiness; cities were ranked based on an overall score.

Coming out on top of the happy meter is Fremont, Calif., a city of about 230,000 across the bay from San Francisco, home to the California School for the Deaf and a Tesla (TSLA) factory. Fremont also ranked No. 1 for lowest separation and divorce rate, and was No. 2 for lowest rate of depression. The city ranks fourth for highest rate of participation in sports.

Based on WalletHub’s research, here are the happiest and unhappiest cities in the U.S.: