The Happiest Place on Earth? Hawaii, and the Rest of America Too - Bloomberg

The US has its troubles, but a new study suggests that most of the happiest states in the world are in America. Happiness comes in waves. Tyler Cowen Subscriber Benefit Subscribe How happy are Americans, really? This country has its troubles, surely, but a new study suggests things may be better than they seem. Two economists, David G. Blanchflower of Dartmouth and Alex Bryson of University College London, have come up with a new and more intuitive way to measure well-being. The results are striking. If you consider US states as comparable to countries, 16 of the top 20 political units in the world for well-being are in the US — including the top seven. Many happiness surveys ask individuals how satisfied they are with their lives. That is one way of phrasing the happiness question, but it has its biases. It tends to favor nations where people have a strong sense of self-satisfaction — or, if you want to put a more negative gloss on it, where the people are somewhat smug. Those are som

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