Concord named 'Happiest City in the U.S.' in recent study

CONCORD, Calif. - Concord was named the happiest city in the United States in a recent Instagram-based study.

Using Microsoft’s face recognition program, analysts from HouseFresh looked at Instagram selfies from 100 of the biggest U.S. cities to see which were the happiest places to live. 

With a happiness score of 79.1 out of 100 and nearly three-quarters of residents grinning in their photos, Concord finished at the top.

Home of the Sunvalley Mall, Six Flags Hurricane Harbor, and Round Table Pizza headquarters, Concord is the largest city in Contra Costa County.

The facial recognition tool placed numerical estimates on emotions based on characteristics and expressions, analysts said.

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"For the smiliest cities and states, we considered that a face has a smile if its smile score was greater than 0.75," organizers of the study said. "The locations were ranked by the percentage of people smiling."

Rounding out the top 5 behind Concord were Provo, Utah; Knoxville, Tennessee; Charleston, South Carolina; and Mesa, Arizona.

San Francisco ranked No. 15 in the poll.

Last year another study by WalletHub named Fremont as the happiest city in America. 

Analysts looked at key indicators of happiness, ranging from the depression rate to the income-growth rate to how much leisure time spent on a daily basis in that study.