Do Housing Bubbles Engender Happiness?

We may be onto something here. A new study by two economists found that the happiest people live in five sunshine states, three of which, coincidentally, were home to the biggest real estate bubbles during the boom: Hawaii, Florida and Arizona.

Andrews Oswald and Stephen Wu looked at happiness rankings combined with the criteria that people say make a place ideal, things like lower taxes, playing on acres of accessible public land, short commuting times. They found -- and I so hope no one dished out a million dollars of hard earned money for this eureka -- that the happiest people live in states with higher qualities of life.

Really?