MEMPHIS, Tenn — In tonight’s Ransom Note: defining happiness.
That’s a very interesting question in a year like 2020.
But the folks at WalletHub wanted to search for states where people are staying positive despite what’s going on. They looked at 32 metrics. Some of those being: suicide rates, how much sleep we’re getting, how much exercise we get, our unemployment rates, our divorce rates, how hast our income is growing and how safe we are.
The Mid-South created some interesting results because while all three states finished in the bottom ten, there were different reasons.
Mississippians are the happiest among us at 44th overall. That’s thanks in part to its lowest sports participation rate (50th), one of the highest divorce rates (47th), very low volunteerism (49th), and terrible and the least safe (50th).
Tennessee was a little worse at 45th overall. This would be due to a very high depression rate among adults (48th) and we don’t get nearly enough sleep (47th).
And Arkansas was 49th overall. They were driven down by factors like low sports participation (46th) and poor safety record (47th).
The authors of the study say our happiness is mostly up to us. Things like having a positive attitude and making good choices in how we live, but sometimes factors we have no control over can make it more of a challenge.
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