Singapore is a well-off country, with modern technology and furthermore does not have racial intolerance issues. It also has many attractions and has a variety of cuisines. This will attract many foreign people of which some, if nto most, are talented in certain areas. They can actually help develop Singapore both economically and socially.

No one is every truly happy. Happiness is a temporary condition that depends on circumstances. Joy can happen if a person has a spiritual wholeness as well as a balanced life, regardless of circumstances. A person can be joyful with very little, or an abundance, during hard days or easy days.

The big question in here that is unresolved in the introduction is how can happiness be defined? Is it relative to other places, if so can it then simply be worked out by questionaires?

Leaving that slightly to one side the New Economics foundation ranks Singapore as 49th out of 143 in their happy planet index,^[1] so better than most. This is based on life expectancy, life satisfaction, and ecological footprint. The problem of course it that many people may not think all of these matter to them - most obviously a great many individuals are obviously not bothered by their ecological footprint - if people in the United States really thought a lower ecological footprint would make them happier then they would surely reduce it.

1. ^ http://www.happyplanetindex.org/public-data/files/happy-planet-index-2-0.pdf

This does not really show that Singaporeans are either happy or they are not, simply that based on these criteria they have less reason to be unhappy than most. Such an index will never be able to include all possible factors - for example it does not include light levels which would surely knock down some of those Scandinavian countries who tend to do well on this kind of thing yet have high depression rates due to long winder nights.

Simply using surveys of what people thing may manage, but there would be immense translation problems for such a badly defined concept as 'happiness' or satisfaction.

population density is not something the government can do anything about - though it has been slowly extending the island. Moreover in a world in which more than half the population now lives in urban areas even if Singapore is among the most densely populated this does not really mean that it is more densely populated than where most other people live.

Strict laws may be a reason for unhappiness, but for others it brings happiness by reducing crime and providing a secure environment.

It has some of the strictist laws ever for example you can even spit your gum on the street plus it has a huge population density so many people on a little peace of land