Are You Anything Like ‘America’s Happiest Person’?
See if you have any of the same characteristics as America’s happiest person, Alvin Wong.
-Faye Brennan
According to research conducted by Gallup, in order to be the happiest person in America, you need to be:
1. a tall male
2. 65+ years old
3. married with children
4. an Asian-American Jew
5. a Hawaiian resident
6. a business owner who makes $120,000+
How did Gallup come up with these qualities? They called 1000 random Americans over the past three years to poll their happiness based on their quality of life, and then plugged the answers into the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index to determine the above 6 qualities.
So, does such a person even exist? Yes, The New York Times discovered, and his name is Alvin Wong. “He is a 5-foot-10, 69-year-old, Chinese-American, Kosher-observing Jew, who’s married with children and lives in Honolulu,” writes Catherine Rampell. “He runs his own health care management business and earns more than $120,000 a year.”
Read Would You Trade Places With a Woman in Another Country?
When contacted by the newspaper, Mr. Wong admitted that he is a very happy person whose life motto is: “If you can’t laugh at yourself, life is going to be pretty terrible for you.”
That’s pretty awesome for Alvin to be dubbed the country’s happiest person. But, this begs the question: are short, young, non-Asian-American, non-Jewish females who are broke and living in a non-tropical climate the unhappiest people in America?
Wait a second… that sounds a lot like ME! Noooo! (NYTimes)
Tell us: If you had to rate your happiness on a scale of 1-10 (1 being really unhappy, 10 being amazingly happy), what number would you say and why?
Faye Brennan is assistant editor at BettyConfidential.
