Poor But Happy (If a Little Violent)

In case you didn't see it, the New York Times recently had a very effective interactive map of county-by-county food stamp use in the U.S. On the Times site, if you put your mouse over a county you'll get the details (county name, the percent of residents using food stamps, the percent of blacks, whites, and children, then finally the percent increase since 2007).

Dark gray is the lowest level of use, dark blue the highest level. So just at a glance, you can see that the heaviest use is in the South and states that border it closely, with significant levels in the Southwest, Northwest and Maine.

New York and California both have moderately low numbers enrolled, which surprised me. (But hearing this morning on NPR that New York City and the state of California require people to submit to fingerprinting before enrolling may have cleared that up. Perhaps a lot of folks who are eligible balk at that infringement.)

When I first saw this map, I wanted to try my hand at a data mashup, but I couldn't think of one right away. Then I saw the perfect data in today's Pioneer Press: an AP story about a study that ranked the states by how happy their residents said they are.

To add a twist, I thought I would find some data on violent crime rates, and see what came out of all that. My hypothesis was that people would be happiest in states with low violent crime and low food stamp use. Seems reasonable, right?

Not so:

• #1 for happiness: Louisiana, which was also #5 for violent crime, and high for food stamps.
• #4 for happiness: Tennessee... #2 for crime, high for food stamps.
• #6 for happiness: South Carolina. #1 for crime, high for food stamps.

Florida was #3 for happiness, while also #4 for crime but only medium for food stamps, so that was a little closer to my hypothesis. And two other happy states (Arizona, #5 and Mississippi #7), were moderate for crime (#16 and #31) but high for food stamps.

Maine (#9 happiness) was #50 for violent crime (it's a pretty darn safe place!) but the whole state is blue on the food stamp map, except for one county (I believe it's the county where the Bushes have their house).

Hawaii (#2 for happiness) was #36 for violent crime and medium for food stamps. Montana, #8 for happiness, was #41 for crime and medium for food stamps. Those come the closest to supporting my hypothesis.

There wasn't a single state in the top 10 for happiness that was low for crime and low for food stamp use.

In summary:

• 7 of 10 of the happiest states had high rates of food stamp use
  
• 3 of 10 of the happiest states had medium rates of food stamp use
  
• 4 of 10 of the least happy states had low rates of food stamp use
  
• 5 of 10 of the least happy states had medium rates of food stamp use
  

Only 1 state in the bottom 10 of the happiness ranking also had high food stamp use (Michigan -- which was also #10 for violent crime).

Six of the 10 happiest states had above-average violent crime rates, with four of them in the top 10 for violent crime.

Michigan was the only one of the 10 most unhappy states to appear in the top 10 for violent crime; the saddest 10 states only had two members that ranked high for food stamp use (Michigan and Ohio).

So high crime rates don't make people unhappy, generally. Being poor doesn't make people unhappy. I guess being warm in the winter makes people happy (unless you're in Maine, which seems to be plenty happy despite being cold in the winter).

Note: I assessed the state-wide level of food stamp use as low, medium or high by visually averaging the colors from the Times map. The violent crime rate statistics are from the 2006 Statistical Abstract of the United States. The happiness rankings are from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from 2005 and 2006, as reported by Associated Press.

If you'd like a copy of the Excel file I used to do these comparisons, send me an email at daughternumberthree@gmail.com.