Apparently good health and high culture do not make people as happy as eating delicious high-calorie foods with their friends and relatives... because Louisiana which is perpetually among the highest in Type 2 diabetes and lowest in educational measures is the happiest place in the US! New York is one of the least happy.

ignorance is bliss?

It's "adjusted for income and other factors"... which I suspect means that expensive but high-earning places get downgraded and affordable aka poor places get upgraded. Looking at the map, it seems like New Orleans is the only unhappy place in Louisiana... which is ridiculous! And if people were that miserable living the Bay Area, Seattle, Chicago, New York, and other bastions of liberalism... they sure aren't voting with their feet.

Perhaps access to Mardi Gras -- but not living in the middle of it -- makes people happy.

Some might suspect that they’re just putting something in the water, but the five happiest cities in America are all in the same state: Louisiana. Those cities are Lafayette, Houma, Shreveport-Bossier City, Baton Rouge, and Alexandria.

The Northeast and one city in the Midwest did not fare too well: Scranton, Erie, and Pittsburgh, PA, Gary, IN, and New York City were found to be the top five unhappiest cities.

that's funny because when i was driving through louisiana with my truck and trailer in the middle of the night on my way to florida, i stopped twice (once at a restaurant and once for gas) and several people told me both times, "don't sleep in louisiana... make sure you drive on to mississippi if you're going to stop for the night."

maybe they just didn't want me to discover the glory of louisiana and stay forever!

Maybe murderin' makes folks happy!

hahaha!  geeeeeeeeeeeeeeege!  :)

Or perhaps they're happy in Louisiana because they don't sleep?

they were eating boudin and cracklins... maybe that's the secret!

Or maybe just a low threshold for happiness:  Didn't drown in a storm surge today!  Wasn't bitten by a nutria!

Didn't get dragged into a swamp by an alligator.