Keep on smilin’
This Dallas-Fort Worth city is the happiest place in Texas for 2022, report says
Plano is known as the “City of Excellence.” It might need another motto, though: “City of Happiness.”
A new study from personal finance website WalletHub ranks the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb as the happiest place in Texas and the 22nd happiest city in the U.S.
Fort Worth comes in far down the list, at a rather sad 103rd. Arlington is even lower, at 107th, and Dallas, at a dismal 111th.
To come up with the ranking, WalletHub looked at more than key indicators of happiness for 182 of the largest U.S. cities. Among the factors were depression rate, suicide rate, sports participation rate, separation and divorce rate, and hours worked per day.
WalletHub then placed those numbers into three buckets. Here’s how Plano ranked in that regard:
- 24th in the community and environment category.
- 37th in the physical and emotional well-being category.
- 48th in the income and employment category.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a third of Americans to be so stressed that they sometimes find it hard to make basic decisions. Therefore, it’s vital for people to boost their happiness however they can, whether through family, friends, activities, entertainment or work,” WalletHub says. “What people might not realize is that where they live may also determine how happy they are.”
It's not the first time Plano has made the list — clearly, residents here are very happy.
So, what’s the happiest city in the U.S. According to WalletHub, it’s Fremont, California, a suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area. And the unhappiest? WalletHub hands that dubious distinction to Detroit.
Here’s how the rest of the Texas cities in the study are ranked:
- Austin, No. 30
- Grand Prairie, No. 83
- Irving, No. 89
- Garland, No. 97
- Fort Worth, No. 103
- Arlington, No. 107
- Dallas, No. 111
- Houston, No. 112
- Laredo, No. 115
- El Paso, No. 120
- Brownsville, No. 125
- San Antonio, No. 130
- Corpus Christi, No. 139
- Amarillo, No. 143
- Lubbock, No. 157
