This Bay Area city is the 'happiest' in the U.S. But how do you measure happiness?

That’s according to a最近的分析by personal finance website WalletHub, which scrutinized a number of factors including positive mental health, physical well-being and job satisfaction to determine this year’s happiest cities.

A number of Bay Area cities also ranked high: San Francisco landed in third place and San Jose followed in fourth place, while Santa Rosa was in 14th and Oakland ranked 16th. WalletHub’s comparison included 182 of the largest cities, including 150 of the most populated in the U.S.

“一般来说,我们可以说海湾a is a happy place to live because it has a healthy community, environment and job market,” wrote WalletHub analyst Jill Gonzalez in an email. “All of these lead to the emotional and physical well-being of its residents.”

How do you measure happiness?

According to Gonzalez, the company used data from a number of “reputable, mostly government sources,” including the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, as well as their own research.

"The methodology and metrics were chosen by WalletHub analysts in conjunction with academic experts, based on their relevance as well as availability of data,” Gonzalez said.

The analysis is broken into three categories with points assigned to each:

• Emotional and physical well-being: 50 points

• Income and employment: 25 points

• Community and environment: 25 points

Each category includes a number of metrics that were given different weights in the overall ranking. For example, a city’s food-insecurity rate accounted for about 5.6% of the city’s overall rating, but life-expectancy only 2.8%. Some metrics were unavailable for certain cities, but that did not count against a city’s overall ranking. WalletHub calculated the weighted average across all 30 metrics to find the overall scores.

Why is the Bay Area so happy?

Gonzalez said the main reason why Fremont landed in the top spot is because “it outranked the other cities in terms of emotional and physical well-being.” The city ranks Number 1 in the life satisfaction index and has the largest share of adults in good mental health at 90%. It also has the second-lowest depression rate, a high sports participation rate of 83% and one of the lowest rates of opioid prescriptions dispensed per capita.

“The fact that more than three quarters of Fremont's households earn annual incomes above $75,000 leads to a very low poverty rate and adds to the overall happiness,” Gonzalez said. She added that other factors include a “low separation and divorce rate, the large parkland area and the high community well-being score.”

It’s worth noting that some metric scores are the same across their metro area. So for example, Fremont, San Francisco and Oakland all have a life satisfaction index score of 81, and all three cities have a physical health index score of 87.8%. This suggests that WalletHub’s happiness score may not be able to precisely delineate between cities in the same metro area.

San Francisco and San Jose have high life satisfaction index scores and high life expectancies, as well as low depression rates of less than 15%.

“A good financial situation adds to the happiness of the two cities' residents,” she said. “Almost two-thirds of the cities' households earn annual incomes above $75,000, and they have very high income growth rates, as high as almost 50% in San Francisco.”

Still, it’s no mystery that the Bay Area is very expensive, with a high cost of living and a lack of affordable housing that has only gotten worse during the pandemic. The happiness score does not account for cost of living.

“Income and employment do contribute to people's happiness, but to a smaller extent compared to their emotional and physical well-being,” Gonzalez said. “Those who are happy in the Bay Area should definitely be able to afford living there.”

But she said “mental and physical health, food security and time spent relaxing” also factor into overall happiness.

Where does the Bay Area fall short?

The Bay Area cities ranked lower in some categories, such as job security, where Fremont came in 85th and Oakland 86th. Santa Rosa was 102nd in its unemployment rate, while Oakland ranked 146th.

Underemployment rates were dismal for all counties, and commute time was also poor for all cities, especially Fremont, in 178th place. Hate crime incidents per capita were also high for all cities, particularly San Jose (158th). Large, diverse cities tend to havemore hate crimesthan counties with few people of different races.

All the cities ranked low based on marijuana use. For this metric, marijuana use was associated with less happiness, which some may find debatable. San Francisco was nearly in last place at 174th. Gonzalez said the company considered this metric to be an additional factor influencing people’s well-being.

“The smaller the percentage of marijuana users, the higher the level of happiness is,” she said.

Some metrics have higher corresponding points and weights, especially in the emotional and physical well-being bucket. Metrics included the depression rate, adequate sleep rate, physical health index, food insecurity and percentage of residents who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

"The metric has double weight because the percentage of fully vaccinated residents contributes significantly to people's overall physical well-being,” she said.

凯莉黄is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email:kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.comTwitter:@KellieHwang