Happy St. Patrick’s Day to Bleeding Heartland readers who celebrate the occasion. This is an open thread; all topics are welcome. For a laugh, enjoy The Onion’s recent write-up of Iowa fashion week: “The big themes this season are ‘roomy,’ ‘loose,’ and ‘comfortable.'”

After the jump I’ve posted a few links about health and happiness, including details from Gallup’s 2012 report on well-being in the United States. Iowa ranked ninth on the “Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index” but was not one of the “elite five states” that have shown consistently high levels of resident well-being over five years.

You can read Gallup’s full 2012 report here (pdf). Gallup surveys in all 50 states collected data on six factors. Here’s the methodology:

The research and methodology underlying the Gallup- Healthways Well-Being Index and the Community, State and Congressional District Well-Being Reports are based on the World Health Organization definition of health, which is, “…not only the absence of infirmity and disease but also a state of physical, mental and social well-being.”

To compile the data in the 2012 Gallup-Healthways Well- Being Index reports, Gallup completed telephone interviews with 1,000 U.S. adults, seven days a week, excluding only major holidays. Based on their responses, individuals and communities receive an overall well-being composite score and a score for each of six sub-indices including life evaluation, emotional health, physical health, healthy behavior, work environment and basic access.

The top ten states in well-being were Hawaii, Colorado, Minnesota, Utah, Vermont, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Massachusetts.

Iowa’s statewide ranking has bounced around quite a bit during the last five years. Our state ranked 26th in Gallup’s 2008 report on well-being, then jumped to seventh in 2009 before dropping to 19th in 2010 and rising to 16th in 2011. Gallup notes that the “elite” five states of Hawaii, Utah, Minnesota, Colorado, and Montana ” have shown a sustained level of excellence over 5 years.”

Compared to residents of low well-being states, residents of elite well-being states:

* Rate their lives much better, today and in the future

* Have better emotional health, including much lower clinically diagnosed depression and daily sadness

* Have much lower obesity

* Carry substantially reduced disease burden, including lifetime high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, heart attack incidences and chronic physical pain

* Enjoy their jobs more

* Smoke a lot less, but exercise much more

The states with the worst well-being scores were all concentrated in the Bible belt and rust belt; you can view a nationwide map on page 2 of Gallup’s report, or along with this newspaper article.

Page 5 of the pdf file shows each state’s ranking on all six indicators. Iowa’s best categories were for “basic access” (third), “work environment” (fourth), and “physical health” (eighth). We were eleventh in “emotional health” but only 27th in “life evaluation” and way down in 36th place for “healthy behaviors.”

No Iowa cities made the Gallup lists of top ten mid-size or small communities. The Des Moines/West Des Moines metro area ranked 21st overall, Cedar Rapids metro area ranked 24th, Omaha/Council Bluffs ranked 27th, and the Quad Cities ranked 65th.

Pages 15-17 of the report rank all 435 Congressional districts and Washington, DC in terms of well-being. None of Iowa’s four Congressional districts made the top ten list, but three of them ranked in the top 20 percent: IA-04 was 53rd overall, IA-03 was 67th, and IA-01 was 79th. However, IA-02 was way down in the third quintile at 201st overall in well-being. Although California was not in the top ten states overall, five of the country’s top ten Congressional districts are located in California (page 1 of the pdf).

I wonder why IA-04 ranked highest on Gallup’s well-being index. Compared to Iowa’s other three Congressional districts, IA-04 has the oldest population, the lowest median income, and the lowest level of educational attainment.

According to some research, senior citizens “reported less negative thinking compared to other age groups, leading to greater life satisfaction.” Happiness has also been shown to increase with age, although certain age cohorts (people born during the same years) had higher levels of well-being than others.

When the researchers analyzed the data across the whole pool of participants, older adults had lower levels of well-being than younger and middle-aged adults.

But when Sutin and her colleagues analyzed the same data while taking birth cohort into account, a different trend appeared: Life satisfaction increased over the participants’ lifetimes. This trend remained even after factors like health, medication, sex, ethnicity, and education were taken into account.

So what explains the different results?

While life satisfaction increased with age for each cohort, older birth cohorts — especially people born between 1885 and 1925 — started off with lower levels of well-being in comparison to people born more recently. Looking at life satisfaction across all of the participants, regardless of when they were born, obscures the fact that each cohort actually shows the same underlying trend.

Sutin and colleagues point out that the level of well-being of cohorts born in the early part of the 20th century, particularly those who lived through the Great Depression, was substantially lower than the level of well-being of cohorts who grew up during more prosperous times. The greater well-being of more recent cohorts could be the result of economic prosperity, increased educational opportunities, and the expansion of social and public programs over the latter half of the 20th century.

Alternatively, “a specific peptide, a neurotransmitter called hypocretin” may be the key to happiness.