Michigan City Named Among the Most Unhappy Cities in America

In many ways, your happiness is fully within your control. But that depends on your perspective on the difference between happiness and joy.

No matter what way you spin it, your environment factors into your level of happiness a great deal. And as they say, misery loves company, so if you live in an unhappy place, you're more likely to be unhappy yourself.

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Some places are cut out for happy residents over others. Things like the weather, how much sun you get, commute times and the job market are all largely out of the hands of any city's residents, but it sure does impact their happiness - which in turn directly affects other more malleable factors for citizen happiness within the city.

That's why it isn't particularly surprising that some of the happiest cities are in California and Hawai'i. Still, cities like Bismarck, North Dakota, Seattle, Fargo, Minneapolis and Madison, Wisconsin are some of the happiest cities in the country according to a study conducted by WalletHub. So location can play a role, but it certainly isn't the be-all-end-all.

WalletHub's study looked at a variety of factors for the 182 most heavily populated cities in America and ranked them from happiest to least happy and one Michigan city landed at the very bottom of the list.

It likely comes as no surprise, but Detroit was named the least happy city in the study. A significant portion of Detroit's low ranking was that it ranked the worst in terms of Income & Employment factors. Personal well-being factors and community and environmental factors were also in the bottom six in both categories.

In some niche categories, Detroit ranked as the city with the worst sleep and separation and divorce rates. The city also ranked in the bottom five for sports participation, which is rather surprising.

Grand Rapids landed a bit higher at No. 85 overall. Grand Rapids benefited from top-50 scores for income & Employment factors but suffered greatly with the 100th-ranked personal well-being scores.