Do you think Singaporeans are happy?

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,[[http://www.happyplanetindex.org/public-data/files/happy-planet-index-2-0.pdf]] 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.

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$1  
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.