Personal finance website WalletHub recently conducted a study to determine which of the 50 states is the happiest. While we all know to take these types of studies with a grain of salt, it's always interesting to see how your state stacks up. The company worked with a team of analysts and conducted a comprehensive look across 28 different metrics, from depression rate to income growth.
The highest ranking states in the 2017 Happiest States in America report scored best on a 100-point scale in areas like job satisfaction, low suicide rate, low divorce rate, and adequate sleep.
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Nebraska comes in at #5, since it ranked high for emotional and physical wellbeing, getting a good night's sleep, and volunteer rate. At #4 was California, which, despite having the fifth-lowest income growth in the nation also has the third-lowest rate of depression (must be all that sun).
At #3, Hawaii ranked number-one for emotional and physical wellbeing, which is unsurprising given that it also reportedly has the lowest number of depressed adults. Utah landed at #2, with the lowest divorce rate and the highest volunteer rate. (Although it does have the fifth-highest suicide rate in the country.)
The happiest state in the country this year is Minnesota: It was ranked as fourth for overall safety and third for adequate sleep. Read the entire report here.