Nation’s happiest cities nowhere near Atlanta, WalletHub finds

If you’re happy and you know it, you probably live in California. That’s where three of the country’s top 10 happiest cities can be found: Fremont (No. 1), San Jose (No. 5) and Santa Rosa (No. 10).

You might live in North Dakota home to Nos. 2 (Bismarck) and 3 (Fargo) on WalletHub’s annual ranking of the happiest cities in the U.S.

For its analysis, WalletHub compared 182 of the largest cities — including the 150 most populated, plus at least two of the most populated cities in each state — across three key dimensions: emotional & physical well-being, income & employment, and community & environment.

Within those categories, the financial website evaluated 31 relevant metrics. Each metric was graded on a 100 point scale, with a score of 100 representing maximum happiness.

Georgia’s happiest city, according to WalletHub, is Atlanta, which finished No. 90, with a score of 54.75. In each category, the city ranked:

Emotional & physical well-being: 79

Income & employment: 104

Community & environment: 116

You have to keep scrolling through the list to find the other two Georgia cities included in the analysis.

Columbus finished No. 171, with a score of 43.72. The city had a respectable ranking of 38 in the community & environment category, however.

Augusta, with a score of just 38.76, finished No. 180. The city finished in last place in the emotional and physical well-being category.

Cleveland, Ohio, and Detroit claimed the bottom two spots, with the latter scoring just 34.29 to finish in last place.