Does winning the lottery make you happier?

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Winning the lottery is an obvious boost for your bank balance, but for overall well-being and happiness? Not so much.

Lottery winners find improved life satisfaction after a $100,000 cash prize, but that doesn’t mean that they are happier or have better mental health, researchers from the Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm University and New York University found in a study the National Bureau of Economic Research circulated Monday.

See: 10 ways to get more happiness out of your money

Large prizes were linked to high levels of life satisfaction that persisted for more than a decade, whereas effects on happiness and mental health were significantly smaller.

The researchers asked more than 3,000 study participants who had collectively won $277 million in various lotteries five to 22 years earlier to answer questions including, “All things considered, how happy would you say you are?” and, “Taking all things together in your life, how satisfied would you say that you are with your life these days?” Researchers also asked participants how often they had experienced a negative or positive emotion in the last two weeks.

Their answers revealed that newfound wealth had a greater impact on overall life satisfaction and financial satisfaction than it did on happiness and mental health. “Life satisfaction” refers to how people feel about the quality of their lives overall, whereas “happiness” measured respondents’ day-to-day feelings, said Robert Ostling, said an associate professor at the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University. “Our results suggest it is more difficult to affect happiness than life satisfaction,” he said.

Money can’t buy happiness — so many people say — but it can lead to a higher level of happiness if spent right, previous studies have suggested. When people spend money in a way that matches their personality, they feel happier, according to one study from Yale University and the University of Cambridge, which analyzed 76,000 bank transaction records.

Other studies suggest people are happier when they’re spending their money on others, instead of themselves, or when they spend money caring for a pet or investing in experiences and memories, rather than material possessions.

Also see: An 80-year Harvard study claims to have found the gateway to happiness

One caveat: Don’t look at how your neighbors spend their money. It’s easy to become financially distressed when you’re trying to keep up with the Joneses, according to a recent study by researchers at Georgetown University, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and University of Alberta — so much so that neighbors of a lottery winner are more likely to go into debt, or even bankruptcy.



Source : MTV