If you’re happy and you know it, you probably live in California. That’s where three of the country’s top 10 happiest cities can be found: Fremont (No. 1), San Jose (No. 5) and Santa Rosa (No. 10).
You might live in North Dakota home to Nos. 2 (Bismarck) and 3 (Fargo) on WalletHub’s annual ranking of the happiest cities in the U.S.
For its analysis, WalletHub compared 182 of the largest cities — including the 150 most populated, plus at least two of the most populated cities in each state — across three key dimensions: emotional & physical well-being, income & employment, and community & environment.
Within those categories, the financial website evaluated 31 relevant metrics. Each metric was graded on a 100 point scale, with a score of 100 representing maximum happiness.
Georgia’s happiest city, according to WalletHub, is Atlanta, which finished No. 90, with a score of 54.75. In each category, the city ranked:
Emotional & physical well-being: 79
Income & employment: 104
Community & environment: 116
You have to keep scrolling through the list to find the other two Georgia cities included in the analysis.
Columbus finished No. 171, with a score of 43.72. The city had a respectable ranking of 38 in the community & environment category, however.
Augusta, with a score of just 38.76, finished No. 180. The city finished in last place in the emotional and physical well-being category.
Cleveland, Ohio, and Detroit claimed the bottom two spots, with the latter scoring just 34.29 to finish in last place.
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