The Lottery Winners Curse

A 2002 paper called Estimating the Effect of Income on Health and Mortality using lottery prices as exogenous source of variation in income found that lottery winners tend to be healthier and live longer than non-lottery winners. A 2022 paper called Income Windfalls and Overweight, Evidence from Lottery Winds said a 1,000 pound win reduces risk of being overweight among low educated individuals by 4.5 to 5 percentage points 12 months later. The wealthy may have better access to fresh foods, gym memberships and housing and healthy environments. But one way or another according to this research, lottery wins tend to be correlated with better overall health and a healthier body mass index.