Money and Mental Wellbeing: A Longitudinal Study of Medium-Sized Lottery Wins

One of the famous questions in social science is whether money makes people happy. We offer new evidence by using longitudinal data on a random sample of Britons who receive medium-sized lottery wins of between £1000 and £120,000 (that is, up to approximately U.S. $200,000). When compared to two control groups — one with no wins and the other with small wins — these individuals go on eventually to exhibit significantly better psychological health. Two years after a lottery win, the average measured improvement in mental wellbeing is 1.4 GHQ points.