happiness | Jay P. Greene's Blog

The State of Happiness

December 18, 2009

The news is filled with stories about a new study published today in Science Magazine ranking states by how happy people are. The study is based on huge national survey that asks “In general, how satisfied are you with your life? Subjects can answer very satisfied, satisfied, dissatisfied, or very dissatisfied, creating a 4 point scale. The researchers controlled for personal factors, such as income, age, marital status, race, and employment status to identify which states had the highest regression-adjusted self-reported happiness.

The study also references earlier research by Gabriel, et al (2003) that develops an objective measure of happiness (or more accurately — quality of life). They identified a long list of amenities that might be appealing to people, including weather, access to ocean or inland coast, state or national parks, crime, pollution, cost of living, commute times, etc… They then predicted housing prices based on all of those variables. This would allow them to know, for example, how much more people would be willing to pay for a house (all else equal) for each sunny day on average per year. Essentially, these researchers can empirically derive the price for each of the long list of amenities they identified. The average aggregate price of all of those amenities in each state allows them to develop an objective measure of happiness for each state.

Interestingly, states with higher median household income tend to be less happy. However, it is important to note that the regression with dummies for each state shows positive coefficients for income, so money does contribute to happiness as long as it is only more money relative to my neighbors and not relative to the national average.

It is also interesting that blue states seem to be especially unhappy. I calculated that there is a correlation of .48 between the percentage of voters in a state that voted for Bush in 2000 and the state’s happiness rank, using the objective measure. The objective and subjective measure are also strongly correlated to each other, which is reassuring.

I would also note that Matt and I seem to live in happy states, while poor Greg is in a relatively unhappy state. And pity Marcus and all of those other New Yorkers, with NY ranking at the bottom in terms of happiness on both measures.

	Obj.	Sub.
AL	26
AK	23	12
AZ	20	6
AR	3	17
CA	42	45
CO	34	2
CT	32	49
DE	30	22
DC	N/A	36
FL	10	4
GA	36	19
HI	38	3
ID	5	16
IL	48	44
IN	44	47
IA	15	30
KS	19	31
KY	24	34
LA	8	1
ME	9	10
MD	45	39
MA	27	43
MI	49	48
MN	46	25
MS	7	9
MO	40	37
MT	4	8
NE	16	33
NV	29	38
NH	43	26
NJ	47	46
NM	14	23
NY	50	50
NC	17	13
ND	6	24
OH	33	42
OK	21	21
OR	22	29
PA	35	40
RI	12	41
SC	18	7
SD	2	14
TN	28	5
TX	25	15
UT	39	20
VT	13	18
VA	31	27
WA	41	35
WV	11	32
WI	37	28
WY	1	11