Happiest Cities in New York State; YES, the list includes Albany

High incomes, a diverse population, and feeling like you’re at the center of the universe combine as just a few reasons those who live in the Empire State feel happy about where they reside. The happiest New Yorkers are those who live in certain cities, which CreditDonkey has determined give residents the most reasons to smile about. We have ranked them from 1 to 10 on our list of the happiest cities in New York.

New Yorkers wonder why they would live anywhere else. They feel like they have the world at their fingertips — from the shops and job opportunities in New York City to the wonder of Niagara Falls and the chance to get away from it all in the Adirondacks. High incomes, a diverse population, and feeling like you’re at the center of the universe combine as just a few reasons those who live in the Empire State feel happy about where they live.

Certain cities in New York give residents more reasons to be happy than others. CreditDonkey considered a range of factors to come up with the happiest cities in this state. Take a look to find your happy place.

More from Credit Donkey.

The science behind a happy relationship

Regardless of how happy you are in a current relationship (and trust us, you'll find some fascinating facts on how marriage and kids can affect your happiness levels at different stages)--the main takeaway is that there are small changes you can make in your interactions that can boost your relationship satisfaction for the long run.

See the infographic from Happify.

World Happiness

Earth Institute - Columbia University World Happiness Report

We live in an age of stark contradictions. The world enjoys technologies of unimaginable sophistication; yet
has at least one billion people without enough to eat each day. The world economy is propelled to soaring
new heights of productivity through ongoing technological and organizational advance; yet is relentlessly
destroying the natural environment in the process. Countries achieve great progress in economic development
as conventionally measured; yet along the way succumb to new crises of obesity, smoking, diabetes, depression,
and other ills of modern life.

These contradictions would not come as a shock to the greatest sages of humanity, including Aristotle and
the Buddha. The sages taught humanity, time and again, that material gain alone will not fulfi ll our deepest
needs. Material life must be harnessed to meet these human needs, most importantly to promote the end
of suffering, social justice, and the attainment of happiness. The challenge is real for all parts of the world.
As one key example, the world’s economic superpower, the United States, has achieved striking economic and
technological progress over the past half century without gains in the self-reported happiness of the citizenry.
Instead, uncertainties and anxieties are high, social and economic inequalities have widened considerably,
social trust is in decline, and confi dence in government is at an all-time low. Perhaps for these reasons, life
satisfaction has remained nearly constant during decades of rising Gross National Product (GNP) per capita.

The Happy Planet Index : 2012 Report

Source: New Economics Foundation (UK)

The Happy Planet Index (HPI) measures what matters. It tells us how well nations are doing in terms of supporting their inhabitants to live good lives now, while ensuring that others can do the same in the future, i.e. sustainable well-being for all.

The third global HPI report reveals that this is largely still an unhappy planet – with both high- and low-income countries facing many challenges on their way to meeting this same overall goal. But it also demonstrates that good lives do not have to cost the Earth – that the countries where well-being is highest are not always the ones that have the biggest environmental impact.

The HPI is one of the first global measures of sustainable well-being. It uses global data on experienced well-being, life expectancy, and Ecological Footprint to generate an index revealing which countries are most efficient at producing long, happy lives for their inhabitants, whilst maintaining the conditions for future generations to do the same....

At heart, the HPI is a measure of efficiency. It calculates the number of Happy Life Years (life expectancy adjusted for experienced well-being) achieved per unit of resource use.

This year’s results:

Confirm that we are still not living on a happy planet, with no country achieving high and sustainable well-being and only nine close to doing so.

Highlight that eight of those nine countries are in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Show the highest ranking Western European nation to be Norway in 29th place,just behind New Zealand in 28th place.

Place the USA in 105th position out of 151 countries.

Demonstrate how the scores of high-income countries are brought down considerably by their large Ecological Footprints.

What we thought we knew about income and happiness

DESPITE global economic gloom, the world is a happier place than it was before the financial crisis began. That is the counterintuitive conclusion of a poll of 19,000 adults in 24 countries by Ipsos, a research company. Some 77% of respondents now describe themselves as happy, up three points on 2007, the last year before the crisis. Fully 22% (up from 20%) describe themselves as very happy—a more important measure, says Ipsos’s John Wright, since whenever three-quarters of people agree on anything, “you need to pay attention to intensity in the results.”

All such polls come with a health warning.

More HERE.

The Geography of Bliss

Do democracies promote happiness or are happy places are more likely to be democratic? Molly Mayfield Barbee explores this and more in her review of Eric Weiner’s 2008 account of his travels and research on subjective well-being, or “SWB,” the scientific term for the field of happiness studies. The Geography of Bliss is an expansive, humorous, and slightly dark account of the influence government policies and mechanisms can have on happiness.