Oil, Gas Boom Boosts North Dakota to Happiest State

North Dakota, a state that has found success in the fracking boom, turns out to be number one in well being according to a new Gallup poll of the states.

Not only has North Dakota found a jump in its well-being quotient, so has its southern neighbor, South Dakota.

“North Dakota residents had the highest well-being in the nation in 2013, according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index,” Gallup wrote on February 20. “South Dakota trailed its northern neighbor in second place, with its highest score in six years of measurement.”

With the recent fracking boom in North Dakota, a boom that has brought the state to a low three percent unemployment and a budget surplus of $1.6 billion, it is no wonder that the state counts itself as number one.

“In addition to North Dakota’s having the highest overall Well-Being Index score,” the Gallup survey found, “it was the top state on two of the six well-being sub-indexes: Work Environment and Physical Health.”

On the other hand, the survey discovered that, “at the opposite end of the spectrum was West Virginia, which ranked last on all sub-indexes except Work Environment.”

The results were based on 178,000 interviews of adults in all fifty states.