February 21, 2014

Are you in a happy state?

I am. Wisconsin has moved up from 20th to 14th. Meanwhile, North Dakota leapt from 19th to 1st.

27 comments:

TML said...

The clustering of 1st and 5th quintiles quite interesting.

Scott said...

With all the new jobs and money from the oil industry, no wonder the Dakotas are happy.

(Not happy enough to keep my niece in South Dakota from asking me to wire her money, though.)

garage mahal said...

Hmm, anything else going on in Wisconsin?

MadisonMan said...

Maybe all the unhappy people in the Northern Plains have left for warmer climes -- like Louisiana -- and found that unhappiness has followed them?

Fascinating map.

Carol said...

Montana now number 5. Yet we're always hearing about our high suicide rate and DUI numbers as if we were the Worst State in the World!

Shouting Thomas said...

We pride ourselves on our misery in New York State.

Our primary industry is manufacturing misery. That's why we're better than you. We have very serious business to contemplate.

Only yokels in Flyover Country want to be happy.

Tibore said...

Whoa. It is just me, or did that site give anyone else a popup with that fake antivirus warning ("You need to clean your computer to prevent the system breakage...")?

I'll test this in a sandbox here when I get a chance. It's probably one of their ads, not the Daily Mail site itself.

John said...

The geographical state I'm in - IL - is not so happy.

When you click through to the Gallup data, this was interesting:

Economic Confidence Index

"Gallup's Economic Confidence Index is based on state residents' views of economic conditions in this country today, and whether they think economic conditions in the country are getting better or getting worse.

National average -16
State / Score
1-District of Columbia / 19
2-Massachusetts / -1

Anyone else think the people running this country are in denial?

Chef Mojo said...

And Virginia is just right! A perfect blend of misery and happiness! Keeps you on your toes.

madAsHell said...

I noticed that Washington jumped from 15 to 9, and Colorado went from 2 to 7. Colorado is already distributing marijuana, and collecting tax dollars. Washington is still working on it.

Does marijuana diminish happiness??

Portia said...

At this point, what difference does it make?

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Hmmm. OR ranks 25th, so we have median happiness. Sounds about right to me. Though they really ought to redo this in five months or thereabouts. I didn't think SAD was a genuine thing until I'd been through a few OR winters.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

John (the other John), it's not coincidence that about half the richest counties in the US are in MD or VA.

Biff said...

North Dakota, the happiest? That can't be. Wasn't there an article in the NYT not long ago, bemoaning how awful ND had become because of the oilmen, the prostitutes, and the environmental carnage wrought by the oil boom?

Bob Boyd said...

@Carol
Its the suicide and drinking that keep MT moving up on the happy scale.

Shanna said...

There are a lot of poor people in the south. These lists almost always come down to the demographics...

"I didn't think SAD was a genuine thing until I'd been through a few OR winters. "

I did wonder if they polled all those cold states in the summer! That might explain why they were happy.

Bob R said...

The term "happiness" is in the headline, not the name of the index which ranks "well-being." If you took the headline seriously, you'd have to conclude that no state had been happy until the middle of the 20th century. Before that, nothing we would recognize as "healthcare" had been invented. No workplace would be considered "safe."

Ron said...

37th! Hot Damn! Well...at least we're not Ohio....

Bob Boyd said...

Related:
via Drudge

A not-very-scientific ranking of states determined those that have the longest and shortest duration of sex.
http://wtop.com/256/3566972/Ma

Titus said...

West Virginia is a bottom and Mississippi is another bottom-of course.

Mass is a 10, natch.

Tibore said...

"madAsHell said...

Does marijuana diminish happiness??"


Only when they run out. So maybe that's the problem: Legalization's caused consumption to outpace supply. ;)

David said...

North Dakota:

Happy = Money rolling in.

David said...

Carol, some of that Dakota money is rolling into Montana too. Happy, happy, happy.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Shanna,

I did wonder if they polled all those cold states in the summer! That might explain why they were happy.

It isn't even the cold; it's the lack of daylight. I wouldn't have believed that moving 600 miles north, as I did, would make such a difference. The thing about Oregon winters, with the very conspicuous exception of our spectacular snowstorm two weeks back, is that they're cold, but snowless, just wet. It gets dispiriting.

The problem with the general snowlessness, of course, is that when there actually is snow, there's no equipment to deal with it. We were snowbound here four days running. We shoveled out paths up the driveway, and cleared the sidewalk, but no one plows minor streets in Salem; you just wait for it to melt, and hope that more intrepid people than yourselves will carve ruts that you can fit your own wheels into.

I grew up in NY, where heavy snowfall is a given, and a storm like we just experienced would've been pretty much taken in stride. Here, it was more "unforeseeable catastrophe." Pretty much all of Salem shut down altogether. The city required chains for driving on all streets, and its website declared all streets dangerous to impassible. Which was, alas, true.

Now there's the inevitable cleanup, still ongoing, of all the gravel dumped on major arteries, which is pretty much how snowfall is handled in OR. (Salt is out, because anything you put on the roads here eventually ends up in the Willamette River.)

mccullough said...

West Virginia is last again. The Scots-Irish are miserable folk.

ken in tx said...

Always say you are happy. If you don't, they will send you more junk. That's what I do.

stlcdr said...

Um, look at how they 'measure' happiness.

It is also interesting that we get this sort of 'information' from a British rag (not that I'm really complaining about that - must be that lack of happiness kicking in - since there seems to be a lot of newsiness in the Daily Mail).