Hawaii Named Happiest State in New Poll; Lincoln, Nebraska Declared Happiest City

If you are a tall, Asian-American male 65 or older, a resident of Hawaii who's married with children, is religious, owns a business and earns more than $120,000 a year, then you are one of the happiest residents in America.

So says the findings of a new Gallup poll that's named Hawaii the best place in the United States to find personal well-being, for the fourth year in a row.

And the study hardly took into consideration the island state's weather.

The annual Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, intended to measure the elements that make for a good life, interviewed 350,000 Americans overall, surveying about 1,000 respondents weekly about things such as their health, access to medical care, satisfaction with their work and if they felt generally content or worried the previous day.

The reason study researchers knew weather wasn't the main factor in determining happieness, as those dreaming about warmer climes might suspect, was that the much-colder Lincoln, Neb., was actually ranked the happiest city in America.

"It's safe to say weather probably isn't a factor there," said study spokesman Bruce Middlebrooks.

The often snowy Colorado was the second-happiest state.

West Virginia came in last, while Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee --- states with low median household incomes --- also ranked near the bottom of the list.

Residents of Hawaii in fact said they were happier in 2012 than the year before, overall scoring 71.1 out of 100, compared with 2011's 70.2.

Western, Midwestern and New England states generally ranked higher than the rest of the country while states in the South claimed some of the lowest spots on the index.  

Dr. James Pope, vice-president and chief science officer of Healthways, told ABCNews.com the reason for the research is to educate consumers about their health and show them how to improve their lives.

"We knew that people in the U.S. were getting more unhealthy over time and we recognized that there are differences around the country in terms of chronic disease," Pope said.

"You might think people or even communities are the way they are, but we've seen from five years of research that people are able to change and sustain that change," said Dr. Lindsay Sears, principal investigator at Healthways. "People can really change over time."