"Quality of Life" is, in my understanding, a synonym for happiness. But just asking people to rate their happiness doesn't really count as research.
So this appears to be a two-step process: Find certain objective factors, such as time spent with family or environmental factors that are good determinants of peoples' reported levels of happiness.
Next, rank areas according to these factors.
The first part is obviously useful, because it sets specific goals to inform policy that otherwise doesn't really know how to make people happy.
But the reverse step seems unnecessary complicated. And while I wouldn't dismiss the results completely just because they are counter-intuitive, I do believe people tend to do well on judging their own happiness. And there'd be a lot of people moving from California to North Dakota if the results are completely true.
"Quality of Life" is, in my understanding, a synonym for happiness. But just asking people to rate their happiness doesn't really count as research.
So this appears to be a two-step process: Find certain objective factors, such as time spent with family or environmental factors that are good determinants of peoples' reported levels of happiness.
Next, rank areas according to these factors.
The first part is obviously useful, because it sets specific goals to inform policy that otherwise doesn't really know how to make people happy.
But the reverse step seems unnecessary complicated. And while I wouldn't dismiss the results completely just because they are counter-intuitive, I do believe people tend to do well on judging their own happiness. And there'd be a lot of people moving from California to North Dakota if the results are completely true.