"A Windfall Nearly Doubled Their Odds of Divorce"... What Happened to Women Who Won the Lottery? [Experiment Notes]

Analysis of 76,859 Swedish Lottery Players
After Lottery Wins, Men Were More Likely to Marry and Women to Divorce

How would our lives change if we won the lottery and suddenly came into a large sum of money overnight? It is easy to imagine buying a house or quitting a job, but an unexpected windfall can also affect major life decisions such as marriage and divorce.

An analysis of about 77,000 Swedish lottery players found that as winnings increased, men became more likely to marry, while married women faced a temporary increase in the risk of divorce.

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A research team involving New York University in the United States and the University of Barcelona in Spain analyzed the effects of lottery winnings on marriage, divorce and childbirth. The findings were published in May in the international journal Journal of Human Resources.

Unmarried Men Who Came into Money Were About 30% More Likely to Marry

The researchers matched lottery-winning records for 76,859 Swedish lottery players with government data on marriages, divorces and births. They tracked changes over a period of up to 10 years, focusing on adults who were 18 to 44 years old when they won. In particular, they compared people who bought lottery tickets under similar conditions but happened to win different amounts, examining how greater financial resources affected family relationships.

The findings showed that when an unmarried man received an additional 1 million Swedish kronor after tax (about $140,000, or about 188 million won, in 2010), his probability of marrying within five years rose by 4.7 percentage points. Given that the baseline probability of marriage was about 16%, this represented a relative increase of about 30%. The effect was most pronounced among lower-income men whose income before winning was below average.

By contrast, no statistically significant change in the probability of marriage was found among unmarried women. The researchers cautioned, however, that these findings alone are not enough to conclude that men and women respond differently to greater financial resources.

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Married Women Nearly Twice as Likely to Divorce... Why?

A different pattern emerged among married women. For them, receiving 1 million kronor in winnings raised the probability of divorce within two years from about 4% to around 8%. This effect was concentrated among women whose income had been low before winning.

The researchers suggested that sudden financial security may have enabled women to make independent choices. Women who had stayed in their marriages because of financial hardship may have gained the means to start a new life, they explained.

However, this effect had disappeared after 10 years. The researchers said, "Rather than causing new divorces, a sudden increase in wealth appears to have accelerated exits from marriages that were already in the process of breaking down or experiencing problems."

Some changes were also observed in childbirth. For men, each 1 million kronor increase in winnings was associated with an average increase of 0.056 children born over 10 years. This was an increase of about 14% over the baseline level. Among women, by contrast, no statistically significant change was found.

The researchers stressed that these findings do not mean money directly determines whether people marry or divorce. They also noted that Sweden's welfare system and marriage culture may have influenced the results, making it difficult to apply them directly to other countries.

The unexpected windfall of a lottery win became a turning point for different choices among men and women. For men, it served as a starting point for building a new family; for some women, it offered a chance to end an existing marriage. It is sobering to consider that even in Sweden, with its well-developed social welfare system, some women may have postponed divorce because of financial hardship.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.