Drew Dixon
All the warm weather, vast beaches, travel opportunities and booming business doesn’t seem to provide extraordinary happiness in Florida.
A new study by WalletHub, a personal finance company, shows Florida doesn’t have many cities that are among the happiest in America. No Florida towns rank among the top 30 happiest places in the U.S., according to the new ranking.
WalletHub compared 182 of the largest cities in the country. The study factored in elements such as emotional and physical well-being, income and employment, and community and environment, along with 29 other metrics to develop a happiness score for each city, with 100 being the ideal possible top score.
While Florida had no cities in the top 30, the state has no cities near the bottom of the ranking, either. Florida, in terms of happiness, is rather mediocre it seems, at least according to the WalletHub analysis.
Broward County seems to have some of the happier cities in Florida, with Pembroke Pines being the highest-ranked city from the state. Pembroke Pines was ranked 39th, with a happiness score of 59.3. That was followed by Fort Lauderdale for the next happiest Florida city, ranked at 46th with a happiness score of 58.74.
Cape Coral placed 50th with a happiness score of 58.27.
California cities dominated the top 20 list, with seven towns in the top tier. Three cities from that state — Fremont, San Jose and Irvine — captured the top three spots, respectively. There were no California cities near the bottom of the rankings of 182 cities.
Nebraska was the only other state with more than one city in the top 20, with two cities in that tier.
Florida didn’t have any cities ranked below 119th in the country for happiness. That’s where Jacksonville ended up, with a happiness score of 49.17.
Other southern states, though, along with towns from Midwestern states, owned the bottom rung of the most unhappy cities.
Cleveland came in last with the dubious distinction of being ranked 182nd. That was preceded by Detroit, Memphis, Tennessee, Fort Smith, Arkansas, and Gulfport, Mississippi, rounding out the bottom five.
2 comments
T. C. P.
March 16, 2025 at 11:43 am
Jacksonville native here. I’ve watched greed and politics…the politics of greed, really…destroy my once paradisical home. And destroy the people in it. The last time the air was really breathable, without feeling ill from it, was probably during the shutdown in the pandemic. The dunes were just leveled on A1A by the zoo and one after another of the tiny patches of forest left has been clear cut and burned. Our old respites, the beaches and ocean, have been making us sick for years. My great-grandma once told me that she used to swim in the Trout River two blocks from my house when she was a girl. That place is lined with broken concrete now and friends balk at me sticking my feet in there. Respect your mother, folks. She’s the only one you get. (Hard to believe so many of us down here are part Cherokee.)
PeterH
March 16, 2025 at 11:54 am
Florida’s march to lead the nation in its transition into a miserable unhinged unhappy red state is right on time. International travelers to the USA are canceling plans at an alarming rate; 5% tourism loss equates to $65 billion in loss tourism revenue. Republicans are America’s worst enemy! Vote all Republicans out of office!