Hawaii continues to disprove coincidence after its fourth year in a row atop Gallup-Healthways Well Being Index for 2012. The study, which was published Feb. 27, ranks each state’s overall well-being according to physical health, job satisfaction, outlook on life and other factors that affect quality of life. 

While Hawaii remains king of the hill with its surf, sand and isolation, the Southeast didn’t fare so well. North Carolina’s ranking of 35 may seem bad, but compared to surrounding states, it’s a diamond in the rough. Step outside of the Tar Heel State and you’ll run into trouble with West Virginia solidifying its depressive state at number 50 and Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina filling out the forties. 

On the opposite end of the rankings, and coincidentally the country, are the western states. While the Southeast remains in the fourth and fifth quintiles, the western states fill the majority of the first and second quintile with Colorado, Montana, Utah, Hawaii and Minnesota leading the charge. 

Now before you get angry at the Gallup Index for labeling North Carolina based on generalizations, understand its methodology. 

For the Well Being Index, Gallup conducted phone surveys from a random sample of 1,000 people every day for 350 days. Gallup’s pollsters asked questions about physical health, emotional health, lifestyle behaviors, work environment and life evaluation. Now I realize stereotypes can be misleading, but numbers never lie.

I have lived in a couple of these happier states, finishing high school in Montana and completing my freshman year at Oregon State. These states aren’t anything special – they are just different. For some people, it is a good different, and for others, it is not. But there are things that I feel attribute toward the lower rankings down here. 

First, residents of the lower ranked states tend to be heavier, less active, smoke more and have more medical problems according to cardiologist and chief science officer at Healthways, Jim Pope. Whether that’s true or not, I can simply state I had never been to a Bojangles’ before entering the Southeast. I am not solely placing the blame on Bojangles’ but it seems there are a larger number of fast food establishments in the Southeast than anywhere I have lived. 

Second, an important incentive to combat the damage fast food can do is often less common here. I’m not saying that people here don’t exercise as often as out west but economics has taught us that people respond to incentives. Western states have much more land than states in the East while also containing less people. This lack of metropolitan area leaves space for parks, forests, and simply undeveloped wilderness. I feel this abundance of outdoor area creates more incentives for exercise that may not feel like exercise. If I can be active and take part in some form of activity without stepping foot in a gym, I am much more inclined to take part in that activity. 

It’s not our fault that we live around more people. The East Coast was settled first and it remains to be the most populated part of our country while the Rocky Mountains make it difficult to occupy a large portion of the Western states. But the first step of fixing a problem is recognizing there is one. Just because the Gallup Poll fixated North Carolina near the bottom of the poll doesn’t mean government intervention is around the corner, but Pope points out how communities can use this information to diagnose problems and prescribe changes. 

Whether people take the rankings personally or completely blow them off, happiness can be found anywhere, but it seems people in the Western states have more reasons to smile.