But a new study has explored the impact on relationships of quite the opposite situation. What happens when a couple wins the lottery? Do they stay or split, and does a sudden injection of wealth impact on men and women differently?
Researchers in Sweden produced a paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which focused on couples who’d won the lottery over a 10-year period. They only included wins of over a million Swedish Krona (around £74,000). The aim of the study was to find out the effects of wealth on marriage and fertility, to see if couples tend to stay together after a large lottery win.
The results were interesting, as it was revealed that women who win the lottery were twice as likely to get a divorce in the two years immediately afterwards.
One possible reason for this is that the sudden wealth “accelerated the termination of marriages whose dissolution were already underway.” With the new-found freedom that money can bring, more women found it easier to leave or end unhappy marriages. However, this risk of divorce seemed to fade away over time. Researchers said:
But for men, lottery wins appeared to reduce the risk of divorce by as much as 40% over a 10-year period. Compared to the general population, lottery winning men also were more likely to get married in the decade following the event. In the five years after the windfall, the probability of an unmarried man tying the knot increased by 30%, according to researcher’s estimates.
The cynical (although likely true) reason given for this is that “wealth increases men’s attractiveness as prospective and current partners".
The research also looked at whether a big lottery win had any impact on fertility, on whether winning couples went on to have children after coming into money. It found that a large win boosted the likelihood of a man fathering a child with the following 10 years by a not-insignificant 13.5%. This is linked to the increase in marriage probability for men who’ve won the lottery.