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 pounds and 120,000 pounds (that is, up to approximately US$ 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.