This California county was ranked the happiest in the state — and it wasn't LA or San Francisco

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - For nearly a year now, lawmakers in California have been trying to figure out what makes Californians happy. The idea being that happiness can have a lot of beneficial impacts, like better health and productivity. A new report from the California Select Committee on Happiness and Public Policy Outcomes took a look at all of California's 58 counties and ranked them by their happiness levels.

Alpine County, just south of Lake Tahoe, was deemed the happiest county in the state according to the committee's new report. The committee got the data from a Gallup World Happiness Report. The survey polled residents between 2009 and 2018, and asked them to rate their happiness on a scale from 1 to 10.

Alpine County is the least populated county in the state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and only 12 respondents from Alpine County were included in that survey.

Excluding Alpine County, Marin County is the "happiest" county in the state. The committee found that "if Marin County was its own nation, it would rank as the seventh-happiest country in the world, between the Netherlands and Canada."

Placer County, Yolo County, and San Luis Obispo County finished off the top five.

In Southern California, Orange County ranked as the state's eighth-happiest county, while Los Angeles County ranked 29th, behind San Francisco at 20.

It's also worth noting that while Alameda County ranked near the middle of the pack, the city of Fremont in Alameda County, has been named the happiest city in the country for the last five years.

The committee noted some through lines in their findings. For instance, seven of the top 10 happiest counties were on the coast and had higher-than-average incomes, while nine of the 10 least happy counties were inland, and had lower-than-average incomes.

Also included in the report was a survey by the Public Policy Institute of California. The survey gauged how Californians' happiness levels have changed over the last 25 years. In 2023, 16% of Californians said they were "very happy" (down from 28% in 1988), and 26% said they were "not too happy," up from just 13% in 1988.

"These two separate data sets show that while many Californians are happy, unhappiness is growing in California and that happiness is not distributed evenly across the state," the report concluded.

So how did we get here? One of the big factors the committee found was a drop in youth happiness. Typically, the report says, people are the happiest as youths and young adults, then again as seniors, in a sort of "U-turn" pattern. But, young people in California and across the U.S. are significantly less happy now than in past years.

Another big factor was wealth. The committee's conclusion was that while the correlation between high wealth and high happiness still isn't clear, poverty is very closely linked to unhappiness.

"It’s not just in the ways we first might think," CSU Sacramento Professor Ted Lascher told the committee. "It’s access to good food and being able to get health care, and things of that sort. But a lot of it is even psychological."

Using all of this information, the committee hopes to be able to make residents' happiness more of a focus for state lawmakers when trying to new legislation.

"Whether or not the Select Committee on Happiness continues into the next legislative session, the work of the committee should continue in some way," the report concluded. "When developing legislation, the potential impact on collective and individual happiness should be considered by the author."