Fremont, San Jose, and Irvine are the happiest cities in America, according to new rankings from WalletHub.
In order to determine the happiest cities in America, 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 — across three key dimensions: 1) Emotional & Physical Well-Being, 2) Income & Employment and 3) Community & Environment.
We evaluated these categories using 29 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing maximum happiness. Data for metrics marked with an asterisk (*) were available only at the state level.
We then determined each city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.
WalletHub looked at depression and suicide rates, life expectancy, divorce rates, commute times, unemployment, participation in sports, and more.
A total of seven California locales ranked among the top 20:
Fremont, CA*
San Jose, CA*
Irvine, CA*
Sioux Falls, SD
Overland Park, KS
Lincoln, NE
Madison, WI
Scottsdale, AZ
San Francisco, CA*
Huntington Beach, CA*
Bismarck, ND
Omaha, NE
Seattle, WA
Charleston, SC
San Diego, CA*
Columbia, SC
Plano, SC
Honolulu, HI
South Burlington, VT
Garden Grove, CA*
See the full list here.
List and data were compiled by WalletHub and do not reflect statistics on all cities.