Edhat Staff
By the edhat staff
We’ve all seen the articles about which countries are deemed the “happiest.” Headlines around the globe wait for the annual survery that delcares [insert Scandanavian country here] as the place where happiness abounds.
It could be the universal healthcare, free higher education, rehabilitation programs, and plethora of other social safety nets that contribute to baseline of contentment of said Nordic country. Things that seem mythical to Americans, but an Australian-based money exchange server, S Money, decided to narrow the happiness scale in a way Americans can understand, using capitalistic dollars and cents.
Look no further than our own little town. Santa Barbara has been listed as the most expensive U.S. city to be happy in.
The researchers used data from a 2018 Purdue University study on the relationship between happiness and income to find the price of happiness in every city. They converted data from the study to compare the actual price of happiness in each city according to the cost of living value.
As many of us already know, it’s expensive to live here. Virtually every discussion on housing turns into diatribes of how the cost of living in this former sleepy beach town has launched higher than a SpaceX rocket.
Sure, there will always be those 7th generation Santa Barbarans who inherited their great grandparents home that was originally purchased for 4 nickels and a basket avocadoes that don’t understand. To burst their generational-wealth bubbles, the cost of living in Santa Barbara is 57% above the national average, according to the Economic Research Institute.
This latest report puts a price of happiness in Santa Barbara at an annual income of $162,721.
Santa Barbara County has also been named one of the happiest places in the world based on The Blue Zones Index. It ranks the parts of the world where people regularly live longer than average.
So what do we have to complain about if we’re so happy, other than going broke?
While Santa Barbara tops the happy-expensive list, four other California cities aren’t far behind.
10 most expensive cities to be happy in the U.S.
- Santa Barbara, Calif.
- Honolulu, Hawaii
- New York, N.Y.
- San Francisco, Calif.
- Seattle, Wash.
- Oakland, Calif.
- Anchorage, Alas.
- Sacramento, Calif.
- Boston, Mass.
- Irvine, Calif.
Honolulu, Hawaii, ranks as the second most expensive city in the U.S. to be happy in. The Hawaii capital, located on the island of Oahu, had an annual price of happiness of $148,943.
On the flip side, Knoxville, TN is the American city with the lowest cost of happiness at $88,032.
If you feel like trading your flip flops for cowboy boots, researchers seem to feel we’d all be happy there for a lower price.
