Is This Really the Only “Happy” Town in New York?
According to an extensive WalletHub research project ranking the happiest towns in the country, no town from New York is in the top 10. Or top 20. Or even the top 30. What gives? The first New York town on the list comes in all the way down at 44, and it's on the Hudson River. We'll get to the "winner" in a second, but my question is, how the hell didn't any of our other towns make it?
Judging "Happy"
There's actually an easy answer why more Hudson Valley locations didn't make the cut: our towns aren't big enough. The folks at WalletHub used the top 150 most populated cities in the country as a starting point, then made sure to include "at least two of the most populated cities in each state". That excludes almost every town, hamlet, and village in our area. They took into consideration things like life expectancy, depression rates, income, poverty rates, and more. In the end, 4 New York cities made the cut.
How We Did
The Hudson River city that ranked the highest in the state? It's Yonkers, NY, in Westchester County coming in at #44. While Yonkers is too far south for many to consider it a Hudson Valley town, I'd like to think that the proximity to the river contributed to the happiness factor. Here's how all the New York towns on the list placed:
44. Yonkers, NY
58. New York City
131. Rochester, NY
136. Buffalo, NY
This is where these lists frustrate me. I mean, data is data, but are people in New York City really happier than residents in Beacon, for instance? I've spent a lot of time in both places, and I've only seen someone curse out a pigeon in one of them. Then again, maybe it's good to be left off the list, it may slow down the city migration, if only for a little while longer.
Want to spend some more time out of the house but in the Hudson Valley? Check out this awesome local Airbnb below.