WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans in Hawaii and Utah continued to lead the nation in well-being in the first half of 2009, with the two states having switched places since 2008. West Virginia and Kentucky maintained their status as the states with the lowest well-being.
These state-level data are from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index and the AHIP State and Congressional District Resource for Well-Being, and are meant to provide a preliminary reading on the well-being of the states of the nation in anticipation of the complete 2009 rankings, which will encompass all 12 months of the year. The Well-Being Index score for the nation and for each state is an average of six sub-indexes, which individually examine life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors, and access to basic necessities. The January through June 2009 aggregate includes more than 170,000 interviews conducted among national adults, aged 18 and older.
The midyear 2009 Well-Being Index score for the country so far in 2009 is 65.2, a moderate decline from 65.9 in 2008. The Well-Being Index is calculated on a scale of 0 to 100, where a score of 100 would represent ideal well-being. Well-Being Index scores among states vary by a range of 9.5 points.
Looking at change over time among states, Iowa's Well-Being Index composite score moved up the most, from 65.6 in 2008 to 67.5 in the first half of 2009. Well-being in Wyoming has trended down the most, dropping to 65.9 in 2009 from 68.0 last year, though it should be noted that Wyoming has a relatively small sample size at this point and thus a larger margin of error. (See page 2 for a complete list of state Well-Being Index scores.)
Four of the top 10 scoring states -- Iowa, North Dakota, Kansas, and Minnesota -- are in the Midwest. As in 2008, many of the states with lower Well-Being Index scores are located in the South. Nevada is the only Western state in the bottom 10.
The national scores for five of the six sub-indexes that make up the Well-Being Index trended down, though marginally, in the first six months of 2009 in comparison to 2008. Life Evaluation is the only sub-index to increase at the national level, with all but seven states moving in a positive direction in the first six months of 2009. Life evaluation improved the most in North Dakota and South Dakota, while Wyoming experienced the steepest decline.
At the other end of the spectrum, the January through June data show that nationally, Work Environment, which measures an individual worker's engagement with his or her job, is the sub-index that has moved the most in a negative direction. More than three-quarters of states have seen their Work Environment score move in a downward direction in 2009.
A look at the best and worst states on each of the sub-indexes at midyear 2009 reveals the extent to which the sub-indexes drive the overall rankings. In addition to having the best overall Well-Being Index score, Hawaii is also at the top in terms of Emotional Health. Utah does the best on Life Evaluation, Iowa tops the nation in Basic Access, North Dakota has the best Physical Health score, Vermont is first in terms of Healthy Behavior, and Idaho is the top scorer on Work Environment. On the flip side, West Virginia fares worst on three of the six sub-indexes -- Life Evaluation, Emotional Health, and Physical Health -- as it did in 2008. Kentucky performs worst on Healthy Behavior and Mississippi is at the bottom on Basic Access, also the same as in 2008. Delaware has the lowest Work Environment score.
Bottom Line
The overall well-being of the nation has thus far trended down 0.4 points in 2009, representing a modest decline from 2008 in Americans' collective well-being. At the midyear point, a number of Western and Midwestern states top the country on well-being, while Southern states are more prevalent toward the bottom of the list. The states at the very front and very back of the pack have remained unchanged from 2008, with Hawaii and Utah continuing to lead the nation on overall well-being, while West Virginia and Kentucky are trailing. While the data from the first six months of 2009 give a glimpse into where the well-being of states is headed, a more complete picture of state-level well-being will take shape after a full year of data collection.
Complete 2008 rankings are available at the AHIP State and Congressional District Resource for Well-Being, a one-of-a-kind interactive database that enables users to research and sort Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index data alongside the most up-to-date statistics from the Census Bureau.
For more information on what each sub-index comprises, see page 3.
Gallup.com's "State of the States" series reveals state-by-state differences on political, economic, and well-being measures Gallup tracks each day, based on data collected between January and June 2009. To see all stories published in the midyear 2009 series, click here. New stories will be released throughout the month of August.
Editor's Note: Updates to the national Well-Being Index scores for 2008 and 2009 are reflected in this article.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with more than 178,545 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Jan. 2-June 30, 2009, as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±0.2 percentage points.
The margin of sampling error for most states is ±1-2 percentage points, but is as high as ±4 points for smaller states such as Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, and Hawaii.
The AHIP State and Congressional District Resource for Well-Being categorizes the District of Columbia as a congressional district.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
About the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index™
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index is the first and largest survey of its kind, with 1,000 calls a day, seven days a week. It is the official statistic for Well-Being in America, giving a daily measure of people's well-being at the close of every day based on the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of health as not only the absence of infirmity and disease but also a state of physical, mental and social well-being. The Well-Being Index will be a daily measure determining the correlation between the places where people work and the communities in which they live, and how that and other factors impact their well-being. Additionally, The Well-Being Index will increase the understanding of how those factors impact the financial health of corporations and communities. For additional information, go to www.well-beingindex.com.
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index includes six sub-indexes:
Life Evaluation
The Life Evaluation Index includes a self-evaluation of two items (present life situation and anticipated life situation five years from now) using the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale with steps from 0 to 10, where "0" represents the worst possible life an "10" represents the best possible life. Taken together, respondents are then classified as "thriving," "struggling," or "suffering."
Emotional Health
The Emotional Health Index includes 10 items: smiling or laughter, learning or doing something interesting, being treated with respect, enjoyment, happiness, worry, sadness, anger, stress, and diagnosis of depression.
Work Environment
The Work Environment Index includes four items: job satisfaction, ability to use one's strengths at work, supervisor's treatment (more like a boss or a partner), and is it an open and trusting work environment.
Physical Health
The Physical Health Index includes nine items: sick days in the past month, disease burden, health problems that get in the way of normal activities, obesity, feeling well-rested, daily energy, daily colds, daily flu, and daily headaches.
Healthy Behavior
The Healthy Behavior Index includes four items: smoking, eating healthy, weekly consumption of fruits and vegetables, and weekly exercise frequency.
Basic Access
The Basic Access Index includes 13 items: access to clean water, medicine, a safe place to exercise, affordable fruits and vegetables; enough money for food, shelter, healthcare; having health insurance, having a doctor, having visited a dentist recently; satisfaction with the community, the community getting better as a place to live, and feeling safe walking alone at night.
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