Only one US city makes the Happy City Index top 50

The annual Happy City Index, which measures the happiness of populations across 64 indicators including affordability, mobility, and healthcare access, once again contains very few American cities — and those at the bottom of the list, reports Luis Prada in Vice. 

"At the top of the list sits Copenhagen, followed by Helsinki and Geneva, cities that don’t need to be forced into using public funds to invest in services that benefit their citizens, like public transit, clean environments, and more transparent governance, which all ultimately lead to a stronger sense of social trust." San Francisco is the only U.S. city to make the top 50 at number 45. New York, Dallas, Austin, Milwaukee, and San Diego, among others, also made the list.

As Prada notes, cities can only do so much to make their populations healthier and happier within larger national systems that may not work in their favor. "Cities can tweak zoning laws and add some bike lanes, but they can’t provide us with a universal healthcare system or provide the nation as a whole with a massive overhaul of its transit infrastructure."