The Happiest States In America

Gallup is out with its annual ranking of the happiest states in the U.S., and this year North Dakota grabbed the top spot, taking the title from longtime frontrunner Hawaii.

Gallup measures happiness, or wellbeing, on a set of six sub-indexes, which individually examine life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors, and access to basic necessities.

Here are the 10 states with the highest and lowest levels of wellbeing, according to Gallup:

How did North Dakota move so far up in the rankings? According to Gallup, it also ranked as the top state in two of the six sub-indexes: work environment and physical health.

North Dakota has experienced a serious boom in job growth: For the fifth year in a row, that state topped all other states in employee perceptions of job creation at their workplaces in 2013, as measured by the Gallup Job Creation Index.

North Dakota has also benefitted from a surge in its oil industry (just look at what's happening in the boomtown of Williston), and topped a recent list of payroll-to-population state rankings.

The chart below shows how state rankings changed between 2012 and 2013:

Gallup compiled its state-level well-being data based on more than 178,000 interviews with American adults across all 50 states, conducted from January-December 2013.

You can find Gallup's full report here.