This Is The Happiest City In America

Flickr/Tobias Wutzow/CC BY

For the second year in a row, the happiest and healthiest people in the U.S. live in a gloriously sunny city, and it’s not in Honolulu (fourth on the list), Santa Cruz (which ranked third), or the outdoorsy haven of Boulder, Colorado (which came in at tenth).

A post shared by Naples, FL (@naples_fl) on Jan 21, 2017 at 8:03am PST

The happiest city of all, measured across five elements of well-being — purpose, social, financial, community and physical — is Naples, Florida, according to the Gallup-Healthways 2016 poll called State of American Well-Being. The poll puts residents in Naples, as well as the adjacent communities of Immokalee and Marco Island, as the happiest of their city-dwelling peers across the country. In 2015, Naples also took the top spot, moving up from the seventh overall spot in 2014.

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The community-driven data, which polled residents in 189 metropolitan areas nationwide, gave Naples the top score of 66.3 points out of 100, considering metrics like physical happiness (good overall health and energy), community (a feeling of pride and safety within the community) and financial stability (having the monetary resources to reduce stress and increase security). Notably, according to the Naples Herald, the community is home to three billionaires on Forbes’ list of the wealthiest Americans in 2015.

“Naples has not only consistently maintained its well-being advantage relative to the rest of the nation, but its well-being has also been shown to be improving faster than what is found nationally,” the poll noted. “This is the earmark of an area that has strong well-being and that is striving to get better, reflecting good leadership and elevating the type of culture that can potentially fortify its gains well into the future.”

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Factors like a strong local culture, proximity to a university and purposeful leadership all contributed to a high score.

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Here’s how the rest of the top ten on the list stacked up:

2. Barnstable Town, Massachusetts
3. Santa Cruz, California
4. Honolulu, Hawaii
5. Charlottesville, Virginia
6. North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, Florida
7. San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles-Arroyo Grande, California
8. Lynchburg, Virginia
9. Hilton Head Island-Bluffton-Beaufort, South Carolina
10. Boulder, Colorado