Louisiana is the happiest state in the US, followed by Hawaii and Florida. The unhappiest states are West Virgina, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, though California tops the list for most mental distress.
That‘s the finding of a new paper by Stephen Wu and Andrew Oswald.
You might object that this tells us more about people than about states. Older people are happier than middle-aged ones, educated ones happier than less educated, and whites are happier than blacks. However, the authors control for these things.
The differences between states are large. The numbers suggest that moving to Louisiana and from West Virginia is similar to moving from an income of $35-50,000 to one of $50-75,000.
What’s more, there’s no statistically significant link between a state’s GDP per capita and its happiness.
These differences raise a puzzle. Why is it that, in a nation whose people are famously mobile, are differences not eroded by market forces? In theory, if a particular state offers worse amenities - climate, congestion, whatever - people would tend to emigrate, which in turn would bid up wages to compensate for the disamenities. Across states, there should be compensating advantages.
But this doesn’t seem to happen - perhaps because people are poor predictors (pdf) of future tastes, and so mistakenly move to higher-income, lower-well-being states.
Nothing in Louisiana, it seems, can offset the fact that it is home to much of the world’s greatest music.
That‘s the finding of a new paper by Stephen Wu and Andrew Oswald.
You might object that this tells us more about people than about states. Older people are happier than middle-aged ones, educated ones happier than less educated, and whites are happier than blacks. However, the authors control for these things.
The differences between states are large. The numbers suggest that moving to Louisiana and from West Virginia is similar to moving from an income of $35-50,000 to one of $50-75,000.
What’s more, there’s no statistically significant link between a state’s GDP per capita and its happiness.
These differences raise a puzzle. Why is it that, in a nation whose people are famously mobile, are differences not eroded by market forces? In theory, if a particular state offers worse amenities - climate, congestion, whatever - people would tend to emigrate, which in turn would bid up wages to compensate for the disamenities. Across states, there should be compensating advantages.
But this doesn’t seem to happen - perhaps because people are poor predictors (pdf) of future tastes, and so mistakenly move to higher-income, lower-well-being states.
Nothing in Louisiana, it seems, can offset the fact that it is home to much of the world’s greatest music.
"though California tops the list for most mental distress. "
But is this down to Californians including their pets in mental health surveys?
California is, of course, the world capital of mentally ill pets (most of whom are, naturally, receiving psycho-active medication to ease their suffering).
Posted by: Paul Sagar | December 14, 2009 at 04:57 PM
"Louisiana is the happiest state in the US, followed by Hawaii and Florida. The unhappiest states are West Virgina, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania,"
Oh dear. Purely by eyeballing this list of gini by State:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/state/state4.html
We seem to see that the happy states have higher than average inequality while the unhappy ones have lower than average.
So, that puts paid to The Spirit Level then.....
Posted by: Tim Worstall | December 15, 2009 at 11:05 AM
And the pursuit of economic growth?
Posted by: Matthew | December 15, 2009 at 11:47 AM
Tim,
I don't see that at all in your (rather dated table). But the correlation with beaches and happy states seems much clearer to me!
Posted by: reason | December 15, 2009 at 02:45 PM
what was slightly odd i thought though on their report was they kept jumping from saying there was 51 to 50 states on the titles of their graphs. pedantic i know but there is only 50.
Would ahve been nice if they could have labeleld thier dots as well so you could see which states where the outliners. Otherwise i'm afriad i just kind of glazed over when faced with that much stats.
So thanks for giving a bit of a break down about it.
Posted by: Phil (Dex) | December 15, 2009 at 03:58 PM
Coincidentally, LA is (iirc, and I'm 99.44% certain I do) also the only US state ever to default on its debt obligations.
Posted by: Ken Houghton | December 15, 2009 at 10:49 PM
I believe, however, that wages are lower relative to living expenses in Oregon and in Hawaii than most other places. Clearly, there appears to be some arbitrage going on.
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