Happiness is admittedly, incredibly subjective. One person's happiness (from a high-stakes job, a sprawling yard, a set of twins) is another's headache. Even the things that make most of us happy — dessert, puppies — do so in degrees: That cupcake that brings you some joy may make another person's day.
All of this variability is what makes the geography of happiness so fascinating: Despite our deeply personal differences and definitions of what brings us pleasure (or what saps it), strong patterns emerge across the country when we ask people to describe their own wellbeing.
The below interactive map uses data from a recent working paper on happy (and unhappy) cities by economists Edward Glaeser and Oren Ziv at Harvard and Joshua Gottlieb at the University of British Columbia. Their research mines responses from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a national survey run by the CDC that has fueled most of what we know about the economics of happiness.
http://wapo.st/1rMH6Ji
All of this variability is what makes the geography of happiness so fascinating: Despite our deeply personal differences and definitions of what brings us pleasure (or what saps it), strong patterns emerge across the country when we ask people to describe their own wellbeing.
The below interactive map uses data from a recent working paper on happy (and unhappy) cities by economists Edward Glaeser and Oren Ziv at Harvard and Joshua Gottlieb at the University of British Columbia. Their research mines responses from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a national survey run by the CDC that has fueled most of what we know about the economics of happiness.
http://wapo.st/1rMH6Ji
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