Does Winning the Lottery Make You Happier? The 1978 Study Everyone Misquotes, and What Sweden Found Instead
There is a line that turns up whenever lottery winners come up in conversation: once the excitement wears off, they are no happier than people left paralysed by an accident. It sounds too neat to be true, and mostly it is. It traces back to a small study from 1978, quoted for decades with more confidence than its 22 lottery winners could ever support. Researchers have since gone back with far better data - including a large sample of Swedish winners surveyed between 5 and 22 years after their prize - and what they found is more interesting than the myth: lottery money does seem to make lives better, just not in the way people picture when they buy the ticket.
The Most Quoted Line in Happiness Research
Part of what makes the claim so sticky is that it flatters everyone who didn't win. If a jackpot leaves people no happier than a devastating accident does, then the ticket in the bin cost you nothing but a couple of euros. It is a consoling thought, which is exactly why it deserves suspicion.
The actual research tells a more careful story. The 1978 study was small, and what it found is narrower than the legend. Later studies, with much bigger samples and data reaching years past the win, found that lottery money does leave a lasting mark - on how satisfied people are with their lives, far more than on how cheerful they feel on an ordinary Tuesday.
Four Stops on One Research Question
The treadmill gets a name
Before anyone studied lottery winners, the psychologists Philip Brickman and Donald Campbell described what they called the hedonic treadmill: people adapt to improvements in their circumstances, so a rise in fortune lifts mood only for a while before expectations catch up. It was a theory in search of a natural experiment - and a lottery, which hands large sums to people more or less at random, was the obvious place to look.
22 winners and a line that took on a life of its own
Brickman, Dan Coates and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman interviewed 22 people who had won major prizes in the Illinois State Lottery, 22 comparison participants and 29 people paralysed in accidents. The winners were not significantly happier than the comparison group, and they reported taking less pleasure in everyday things - chatting with a friend, hearing a joke, getting a compliment. But the accident victims did report lower current happiness than both other groups. 'No happier than paraplegics' is not what the paper found.
British winners, two years on
The economists Jonathan Gardner and Andrew Oswald used the British Household Panel Survey, which interviews the same people year after year, to follow players who won between £1,000 and £120,000. Two years after their win, these medium-sized winners showed measurably better mental wellbeing than comparable people who had won nothing or very little. The effect was modest - but it pointed the opposite way from the 1978 legend.
Sweden and the long view
Erik Lindqvist, Robert Östling and David Cesarini surveyed a large sample of Swedish lottery players between 5 and 22 years after a win, drawing on prize-linked savings accounts, a subscription lottery and a scratch-card game. Because prizes are handed out by chance, comparing people who won different amounts gives a clean estimate of what the money itself does. Larger wins brought a lasting rise in overall life satisfaction that showed no sign of fading - but no clear effect on happiness or mental health.
Happiness and Satisfaction Are Two Different Questions
Researchers separate two things that everyday language blurs. One is how you feel moment to moment - cheerful, stressed, bored. The other is how you judge your life when you step back and evaluate it. Ask someone 'how happy are you these days?' and you mostly get the first. Ask them to place their life on a scale from worst to best possible, and you get the second.
Seen this way, the studies stop contradicting each other. The 1978 winners were asked about happiness and small daily pleasures, and a windfall did little for either. The Swedish winners judged their lives as better years later, while their reported happiness looked much like everyone else's. Money appears to buy security, room to breathe and fewer worries far more reliably than it buys joy.
That fits the darker stories too. The winners who unravel are rarely undone by money's failure to cheer them up, but by what it drags in with it: visibility, pressure and decisions made in a hurry.
Why some winners go brokeWhy the Myth Outlives the Evidence
It consoles the rest of us
A story in which winning changes nothing is a story in which losing costs nothing. That makes it pleasant to repeat, and pleasant claims get checked far less often than uncomfortable ones.
Tiny samples make big headlines
Twenty-two winners is a thin base for any conclusion, let alone a universal one. Small studies swing more wildly by chance, which is exactly what makes their results dramatic - and exactly why they need replicating before they become folk wisdom.
The curse stories do the rest
Every ruined winner makes the news and every quietly comfortable one doesn't. Put a handful of spectacular disasters next to a misremembered study, and 'money doesn't make you happy' starts to feel like settled science.
What the Evidence Does and Doesn't Support
- 1Supported: a large win tends to raise how satisfied people are with their lives, and that effect can last for many years.
- 2Supported: the initial thrill fades. People adapt to new circumstances, so planning for the moment the excitement wears off beats chasing it.
- 3Not supported: that winners end up no better off than people who suffered a serious accident. Even the 1978 paper didn't find that.
- 4Mixed: whether money improves mental health. The British study of medium-sized wins found better mental wellbeing two years on; the larger Swedish study found no clear effect.
- 5Worth remembering: these are averages. They say nothing about the minority whose lives a win genuinely wrecks - or the people who give most of it away.
What You're Really Buying With a Ticket
When people imagine winning, they usually imagine feeling different: lighter, freer, happier every morning. The research suggests the fantasy gets the destination slightly wrong. The durable change a big win brings looks less like joy and more like relief - a life that feels more secure and more in your own hands.
That is not a small thing. But it is worth knowing before the jackpot becomes the plan - especially since the odds of a life-changing win are vanishingly small, and the everyday route to feeling more secure, a buffer, less debt, fewer money worries, doesn't depend on a draw at all. And for those who do win: some winners answered exactly this question before the money even arrived.
The winners who gave it all awaySee What Your Numbers Would Really Have Won
If you play, it helps to keep the fantasy and the record apart. Run a fixed set of numbers through years of real draws, across every major lottery we cover, and see what would actually have come back.
Disclaimer: This article summarizes published research on lottery wins and well-being, including Brickman, Coates and Janoff-Bulman (1978), Gardner and Oswald (2007) and Lindqvist, Östling and Cesarini (2020). Findings describe averages across study samples and do not predict any individual's experience. It is not medical, psychological or financial advice. Lottery remains a game of chance. Play responsibly. LottoROI is not affiliated with any lottery operator.