The Happiness Walk
Between 2012 and 2019, Paula Francis walked 10,000 miles through 32 states and Washington, D.C. — stopping, on average, every three miles to ask someone she met a simple question: “What matters most in life?” The walk, a project of Gross National Happiness USA, gathered roughly 3,000 of these conversations.
This map holds the recorded interviews from that journey, each pinned to where it happened. Click any marker to listen. Voices are presented anonymously — names are removed from recordings and transcripts — because what was said matters more than who said it.
What people said
The interviews were transcribed and coded under the direction of Michael Moser at the University of Vermont’s Center for Rural Studies. Eleven wellbeing domains emerged from the answers (Moser & Francis, 2022). A few headline findings:
- Over 40% of respondents named Social Connectedness — family, friends, people, animals — as their first answer; far and away the most common response.
- Psychological Wellbeing (meaning, inner peace, gratitude, contentment) came second at nearly 22%, and Spirituality third at over 11%.
- Many answered in the negative — volunteering what doesn’t matter: “money and stuff.”
The eleven domains
The map’s pins and filters are organized by those eleven domains, in three groups — the same grouping used in GNHUSA’s research and workshops:
- Material — Physical Environment · Physical Health · Time Balance · Material Wellbeing
- Psychological — Psychological Wellbeing · Education · Religion / Spirituality
- Social — Social Connectedness · Community Vitality · Culture · Governance
The domains inform WALKI (Worthwhile American Lives Key Indicators), a U.S. wellbeing measurement framework grounded in what Americans themselves said matters — a citizen-defined complement to frameworks like Bhutan’s GNH, the OECD Better Life Index, and the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi commission’s recommendations. GNHUSA also runs a half-day “Walkthrough of Public U.S. Wellbeing Datasets” workshop introducing the framework and the public datasets that can measure each domain — contact GNHUSA to learn more.
Further reading
- Happiness Walk Data Analysis Report (Moser & Francis, GNHUSA 2022) — the white paper behind this data.
- paulafrancis.com/data — the walk, the domains, and the data story.
- Gross National Happiness USA — research, education, and advocacy for measuring what matters.