Lottery wins made men likelier to get married, and women likelier to get a divorce, a study finds

A large lottery win made unmarried Swedish men noticeably more likely to get married and have children, while married women who won were more likely to get a divorce, according to a study in the Journal of Human Resources. The researchers, David Cesarini of NYU, Erik Lindqvist, Robert Östling, and Anastasia Terskaya of the University of Barcelona, matched 76,859 Swedish lottery players to government records of marriage, divorce, and births.

Lotteries are useful to economists because prize amounts are random. The study compared people who played the same games with the same odds but won different amounts, which comes close to a randomized experiment, Terskaya told PsyPost. The players came from three Swedish games, a monthly subscription lottery, a scratch-ticket lottery, and savings accounts that pay lower interest in exchange for entry into prize draws. The analysis covered winners aged 18 to 44 and measured effects per 1 million kronor after tax, about $140,000 in 2010 money and more than five times a typical Swede's yearly disposable income.

For unmarried men, that much money raised the chance of marrying within five years by 4.7 percentage points, from a baseline of about 16%, or roughly 30%. The boost was concentrated among men who had below-median incomes before they won. Ten years out, male winners had about 0.056 more children per million kronor, a 14% increase. For unmarried women, the effect on marriage was small and not statistically significant, though the researchers note the gap between men and women was not large enough to rule out chance.

Divorce went the other way. A 1 million kronor win nearly doubled married women's divorce risk over two years, adding almost 4 percentage points to a baseline of about 4%. That effect was strongest among women with lower incomes before the win, and it faded by the 10-year mark. “The divorce effect for women is sharp and short-lived,” Terskaya told PsyPost. The researchers read it as money changing when already-troubled marriages end, by giving women the means to leave. For married men, wealth appeared to lower divorce risk, but the authors call that their least reliable result, since it weakens under other age ranges and tests.

The effects are modest in absolute terms. Across all winners, it took about 30 million kronor, around $4 million, in winnings per additional child born within 10 years. Combining their results with earlier lottery studies, the authors estimate that each $100,000 raises a single person's chance of marrying in the next five years by about 1.2 percentage points. Terskaya said that makes cash an expensive way for governments to raise marriage or birth rates.

Jeong Jin Yu, a professor at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University who was not involved, told PsyPost that the results are average effects in Sweden's legal and cultural setting and don't mean money automatically causes marriage, children, or divorce. The study was published online May 12, 2026. For American winners, the more immediate decisions are lump sum or annuity and what to do in the first days after a big win.

Sources

Journal of Human Resources: Fortunate Families? The Effects of Wealth on Marriage and Fertility

PsyPost: Winning the lottery helps men marry, but briefly raises divorce risk for women