California dominates a new list of America’s “happiest cities,” according to a recent ranking.
Financial tech company SmartAsset created metrics that ranked cities based on how much money residents make, their life expectancy and the violent crime rate, among other factors.
Sunnyvale, California, earned the top spot, with SmartAsset saying the Bay Area suburb had the best scores for its “quality of life” and “well-being” categories.
“The city has the highest percentage of individuals earning $100,000 or more (62.5%), the third-lowest percentage of adults living below the poverty-level (roughly 5%) and the fifth-highest marriage rate (56.8%),” the report said, which also noted it had some of the lowest rates of crime at 149 violent crimes per 100,000 residents.
Other Golden State locales cracking the top 10: Bay Area neighbors Fremont and San Jose at fourth and eighth, Sacramento suburb Roseville seventh, and Los Angeles-area cities Santa Clarita and Irvine ninth and 10th.
The “quality of life” category is what put California’s cities over the top, with all of its top 10 cities having lower percentages of people living in poverty, higher marriage rates and were considered safe.
The Washington, D.C., metro area received some props when Arlington, Virginia, was ranked as the second happiest city.
High incomes and low housing costs — and the lowest number of personal bankruptcy filings on the entire list — boosted Arlington’s score. However, it’s the only top 10 city with a marriage rate below the majority (44%).
Frisco, Texas, was the city with the highest marriage rate in the entire study (63%) and was named the fifth happiest city, one ahead of sixth-ranked Plano that’s also in the Dallas area.
Bellevue, Washington, was No. 3 on the list, in large part because its cost of living as a percent of income was the lowest in the study.
Old Dominion was well-represented elsewhere in the rankings, with Alexandria 13th and Virginia Beach 22nd.
The District was ranked as the 40th happiest city in the country. No cities from Maryland made the grade.
Other metrics that contributed to each city’s score were the percent of residents reporting poor mental health days, physical activity rate, percent of adults with health insurance, commute time (in minutes) and the concentration of dining, bars and entertainment businesses.
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