Glad Tidings From the World of Happiness Studies

The pursuit of happiness is every American’s birthright, but some are better pursuers than others. The San Francisco Chronicle recently commissioned Michael Hagerty, a professor at the University of California at Davis, to rummage through the pertinent data and see where happy people abound. In this country, Hagerty found, research rebuts the notion that the West Coast is a happiness hotbed. Residents’ average happiness there is merely on a par with the country as a whole—7.29