Study: Women Are More Likely to File for Divorce After a Big Lottery Win
An international study of Swedish lottery winners found that a large prize doubled the risk of a married woman divorcing within two years. For men, winning tended to strengthen relationships.
Researchers from New York University, Stockholm University, the Stockholm School of Economics and the University of Barcelona have found that a big lottery win can affect marriages differently depending on whether the winner is a man or a woman. The findings were published in the Journal of Human Resources. They indicate that married women are more likely to initiate divorce after winning a large sum.
How the study was done
Over a ten-year period, the researchers analysed the lives of more than 76,000 Swedish residents after they won prizes of various sizes. They looked at data on marriages, divorces, the birth of children and other major life events.
Different outcomes for men and women
Unmarried men who won a large sum most often married within the following five years. Married men used the money and added confidence to strengthen their relationships, including by expanding their families.
The picture for women was different. When a prize was somewhat above 100,000 euros, many married women chose to seek independence and initiated divorce. The authors concluded that a larger win doubled the risk of a woman leaving the marriage within the next two years. If couples got past that two-year mark, the threat to the marriage fell considerably. The researchers concluded that the money sped up the collapse of relationships that had already begun to fray, while stable marriages were not seriously tested by such luck.
The authors summed it up this way: for men, wealth raised the chances of marrying and having children and possibly lowered the risk of divorce, while for women the only clear effect was a higher short-term risk of divorce.
The smallest changes were seen among single women. Apart from greater wealth, their lives did not fundamentally change: they did not rush to hold weddings or have children, but continued to live by their own rules.
Examples from real life
The results are echoed by several widely discussed cases. British couple Adrian and Gillian Bayford, who had been married for nine years, won £148 million in the EuroMillions lottery in 2012 and separated 15 months later. Hundreds of other winning couples have also split, sometimes because of dissatisfaction with how a spouse handled the money.
