One of the alleged positives of winning the lottery is the “life changing” it is supposed to bring to winners. However, recent studies tend to suggest that winning a large jackpot changes one’s life for the better for the short-term, but not necessarily the long-term.
Recently economists at the University of Kentucky and Texas A&M did a study where they matched the names of 35,000 lottery winners against bankruptcy records and found that winners of large jackpots of $50,000–$150,000 were about as likely to go bankrupt as those who won less than $10,000.
The large winners had around the same amount of debt and no more assets on average than the small winners. This leads to the supposition that both types of winners simply frittered away their winnings.
The same economists then looked at how lottery winners did in the areas of marriage and divorce. The found that single men of large and small jackpots were about equally as likely to marry in the next three years. However, single women were 40 percent less likely to marry.
The divorce rates did not seem to be affected by the size of the jackpots. The economists concluded that the costs associated with divorce and dividing of assets were simply too high compared to the extra money available.
