This Minnesota City Was Named ‘Happiest In America’

The Institute For Quality of Life, which I have totally heard of before this study, has named its Happiest Cities In America for 2024 and a Minnesota city is number one!

The Institute for Quality of Life conducts research on issues related to the quality of life, according to its website. The institute 'monitors, studies and analyses areas related to decision-making in communities, creation of social policies, implementation of public services and the effectiveness in responding to new challenges and crises that accompany developing communities.'

While Aarhus, Denmark may have taken the study's title as 'Happiest City In the World,' our very own Minneapolis, Minnesota can lay claim to the crown for 'Happiest City In the United States.'  Minneapolis finished comfortably 'ahead' of second-place Boston.

The survey's methodology evaluated cities against 24 different areas of activity, divided into five categories. The five categories are citizens, governance, environment, economy and mobility.

Minneapolis' ranking was buoyed by a very high score for its economy, while also scoring relatively high in the citizen category. However, Minnesota's environmental score was very low compared to the others in the Top 37 or 'Gold-Tier' cities.

Boston was ranked the second-happiest United States city and 38th in the world, Baltimore third (57th in the world) and Washington, D.C. was fourth (85th in the world).

San Francisco (114th), Salt Lake City (145th), Madison, WI (167th) and Pittsburgh (190th) all made the rankings as well.