If you’re looking for the community with the best overall well-being in the nation, you can’t beat the Naples metro area in Florida. For a third consecutive year, that Gulf Coast community had the highest overall well-being of 189 metro areas nationwide, according to the annual Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index report released today. 

The Des Moines-West Des Moines metropolitan area ranked 51st in the index, dropping from 23rd in last year’s rankings. Its index score was 62.6, down from 63.8 a year ago. The scores ranged from a high of 67.6 for top-ranked Naples to 58.2 for the bottom-ranked metro, Fort Smith, Ark. 

The report analyzes how well-being varies by community and across five elements of well-being:

• Purpose: liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals.
• Social: having supportive relationships and love in your life.
• Financial: managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security.
• Community: liking where you live, feeling safe and having pride in your community.
• Physical: having good health and enough energy to get things done daily.

The Des Moines metro’s scores in those five elements ranged widely, from a ranking of 15th for Financial well-being to 150th for Social well-being. In other elements, Des Moines ranked 89th in the Purpose category, 20th in the Community category and 112th in the Physical category. 

Overall, 2017 was a challenging year for Americans’ well-being. The national Well-Being Index score for the U.S. in 2017 was 61.5 – a decline from 62.1 in 2016. This overall drop was characterized by declines in 21 states, easily the largest year-over-year decline in the 10-year history of the Well-Being Index. Not a single state showed statistically significant improvement compared with the previous year, which is also unprecedented in Well-Being Index measurement. 

The results are based on a subset of 337,690 telephone interviews with U.S. adults across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, conducted from January 2016 through December 2017. 

Among the city rankings this year, the Cape Cod area (Barnstable Town, Mass.) was No. 2 on the list, followed by Boulder, Colo.; Santa Cruz-Watsonville, Calif.; and Charlottesville, Va. All five of the top communities in 2016-2017 have frequented the top 10 highest well-being lists in the past.

On the other end of the spectrum, Fort Smith, Arkansas-Oklahoma, had the lowest overall  well-being score (58.2) in 2016-2017, marking the third consecutive period that it was among the two lowest communities. 

As with the highest well-being communities, most of the lowest communities in 2016-2017 have consistently been among the lowest since 2008. These include Canton-Massillon, Ohio; Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, N.C.; Gulfport-Biloxi-Pascagoula, Miss.; and Flint, Mich.