Chester County Named One Of America's Happiest Places

Editor’s note: a version of this article was published in Patch on June 22.

Good news for Phoenixville residents.

Chester County is the sixth happiest place in all of the United States, according to one new study.

The list was compiled by SmartAsset, a financial services company. It analyzed metrics like marriage and divorce rate, life expectancy, exercise rate, bankruptcy rate, unemployment rate, and poverty rate.

The study had the following to say about Chester County:

“Chester County is a largely suburban county located west of Philadelphia and north of Wilmington, Delaware, SmartAsset’s analysis found that Chester County has one of the lowest divorce rates of any U.S. county. Just 7.6% of adults in Chester County are divorced, 23rd lowest of the 978 counties with a population over 50,000.”

Along with a low divorce rate, Chester also had a lower marriage rate than many of the other counties listed in the top 10.

It also had the highest poverty rate of counties that made the top 10.

The county’s overall score on the index, which ranked all counties from 0 to 100, was 95.5. Loudon, Virginia led the nation with a score of 100.

Nearby Montgomery County, ranked 25th and scoring 90.79, was the only other Pennsylvania county to join Chester in the top 25.

The study collected data on 978 counties around the nation that had a population of at least 50,000.

The south is perhaps the unhappiest region, containing 18 of the 25 least happy counties.

In 2015, the United States as a whole ranked as the sixth happiest country in the world in a similar study compiled by the OECD.

Image courtesy of SmartAsset.com.