0
0
Imagine you buy a lottery ticket and win. Not a little. A life-changing amount. What happens to your marriage?
Most of us have a quick answer. Money fixes things. Or money ruins things. We have all heard the stories.
Now a team of economists has an answer built on real people instead of stories. They followed tens of thousands of lottery players in Sweden for up to ten years. And the answer to “does winning the lottery lead to divorce?” turned out to be: it depends on who won.
Does Winning the Lottery Lead to Divorce? What the Study Found
The study is called “Fortunate Families? The Effects of Wealth on Marriage and Fertility.” It was written by David Cesarini, Erik Lindqvist, Robert Östling and Anastasia Terskaya, and published in the Journal of Human Resources in May 2026.
Here is why it matters. Most research on money and marriage has a problem. People with more money are different in lots of ways. So you can’t tell if the money did anything.
A lottery solves that. Who wins is down to chance. So when winners and non-winners go on to live different lives, the money is the most likely reason.
The researchers looked at 76,859 Swedish lottery players, aged 18 to 44 when they won. They matched them to government records of marriage, divorce and births, and checked back at two, five and ten years.
They measured the effect of a win roughly five times what a typical Swede takes home in a year. Here is what they saw.
- Single men who won were more likely to marry. Within five years, their chance of marrying went up by about 4.7 percentage points, from a starting point of about 16%. That is close to a 30% jump. It showed up mostly in men who had earned less before the win.
- Single women who won? Not much change. The effect on women marrying was small and could have been chance.
- Married women who won were more likely to divorce, but only for a while. In the first two years, the win nearly doubled the risk, from about 4% to almost 8%. Again, it showed up mostly in women who had earned less before the win. And by ten years, the effect had faded.
- Married men who won seemed a little less likely to divorce. But this was the weakest result in the whole study. It shrank or vanished when the researchers changed the age range they looked at.
That last point matters. You may see headlines saying lottery money “protects” men’s marriages. One of the authors herself has called it the study’s least solid finding. It is a maybe, not a fact.
Why Would Money Affect Men and Women Differently?
This is where it gets interesting. The money did not seem to break good marriages. Look at the pattern again.
The divorce jump was short. It showed up fast and then faded. One honest way to read that: for some couples, the money changed when a marriage ended more than whether it would. Those may have been marriages that were already struggling. The money just opened a door that had been locked.
The researchers point to a simple reason. In Sweden, the law says a couple’s property is split equally in a divorce. But the records suggest that in real life, the richer spouse often walks away with much more than half.
Think about what that means for a woman who earns less than her husband. Before the win, leaving might have meant leaving with very little. After the win, she has her own money. For the first time, she can afford to go.
The authors suggest this may matter most where women carry more of the work at home or have less say in decisions. That fits with the finding that the effect showed up in women who had earned less before the win.
For men, the story may be different. Money may make a man feel ready to marry, or make him look more ready to a partner. The researchers say it is hard to tell which.
What the Study Can’t Tell You
Good research comes with a list of things it does not know. This one is honest about its limits.
- It is one country. Sweden has strong public support, easy divorce and open attitudes to different kinds of families. The results may fit other wealthy countries better than places with very different laws and customs.
- It measures averages. An outside expert, Jeong Jin Yu, pointed out that the findings describe the average, not every couple.
- It can’t see inside the home. The records show marriages and divorces. They don’t show who was happy, who was unhappy, or who made the decisions.
- Some gaps could be chance. The difference between men and women in marrying was, in the authors’ words, “suggestive rather than firmly established.”
If you have read about the hedonic treadmill, you know older lottery studies found that winners’ happiness drifts back toward where it started. This study adds something else. Money may not change how you feel for long. But it can change what you are free to do.
What Holds a Marriage Together?
Here is the question underneath all of this. If a sudden windfall is enough to end a marriage, what was holding it together before?
For some couples in this study, part of the answer seems to have been money. Or the lack of it. One person stayed because they could not afford to leave.
That is a hard thing to sit with. And it is no one’s fault in a simple way. Plenty of people stay for good reasons, and plenty leave for good reasons too.
But it raises something worth thinking about. A love no one can afford to leave is not quite the same as a love no one wants to leave.
There is a very old idea about love that has nothing to do with money. It says the deepest love is never held in place by need. It is chosen, freely, again and again. Many people of faith believe that is exactly how God loves us: not because we are stuck with each other, but because God keeps choosing us when we have every door open. And that kind of love tends to make people want to stay.
It turns out the strongest marriages may be the ones where money is not the glue. Where both people could walk away, and both decide each morning that they won’t.
If Money Is Part of Your Marriage Story
You don’t need a lottery win to feel this. Money sits quietly inside almost every marriage. A few free things that help:
- Say the money part out loud. Who earns what, who decides, who would be stuck if things went wrong. Talking about it is not a threat. Silence is the bigger risk.
- Make sure both people have a voice. The study’s own explanation points to power. A marriage where one person controls everything is fragile, whatever the bank balance.
- Find other glue. Shared time, shared laughter, shared wonder. Research has found that couples who feel awe together tend to be happier. It costs nothing.
- Learn how your partner feels loved. It is often not what you would guess. Try our free What Is My Love Language? quiz together.
A good place to start: The Beginner’s Guide to Feeling God’s Presence Every Day. A short video guide and companion PDF for finding something steady in ordinary life, including the days when love feels like work. Get the free guide. Free.
The Bottom Line
Winning the lottery did not seem to wreck marriages. For men, it made marriage more likely. For women, it led to a short burst of divorce, mostly among those who had less money of their own to begin with. The most likely reason is not greed. It is freedom.
Money did not create what was in these marriages. It showed it, and sped it up.
Which means the real question was never “what would a windfall do to us?” It is “what is holding us together right now?” That one is worth asking on an ordinary Tuesday, with no ticket in your pocket at all.
Q&A: Lottery Winners and Divorce
Does winning the lottery lead to divorce?
It depends on who wins. A 2026 study of 76,859 Swedish lottery players in the Journal of Human Resources found that married women who won large prizes were nearly twice as likely to divorce within two years, but the effect faded by ten years. For married men, winning seemed to slightly lower divorce risk, though the researchers call that their least reliable result.
Why are female lottery winners more likely to divorce?
Researchers studying Swedish lottery players suggest that a win gives women who earned less than their husbands the money to leave a marriage that may already have been struggling. In Sweden the richer spouse often keeps more than half in a divorce in practice, so a woman with little money of her own may have had more to lose by leaving before the win.
Do lottery winners get married more often?
Single men who won large lottery prizes in Sweden were about 30% more likely to marry within five years, rising from roughly a 16% chance to about 21%. The effect was strongest among men with lower incomes before winning. For single women, the effect was small and not statistically clear.
Does money make a marriage happier?
Studies of lottery winners suggest money changes what people are free to do more than how happy they feel over time. The Swedish lottery study could not measure marriage quality at all; it only tracked marriages, divorces and births. A sudden windfall appears to reveal and speed up what is already true in a relationship rather than create it.
Discussion Question
The study suggests money may have changed when some marriages ended more than whether they would. Do you think a sudden windfall mostly reveals a relationship or changes it? Tell us what you think in the comments.
Share This
“Lottery money didn’t break marriages. For some women it paid for the exit from one that wasn’t working. That’s a different story than the one we usually tell. https://bgodinspired.com/?p=118332”
“Interesting: a study of 76,000+ Swedish lottery players found single men who won got married more, while married women who won divorced more, but only for a couple of years. Makes you ask what’s really holding a marriage together. https://bgodinspired.com/?p=118332”
“A love no one can afford to leave isn’t the same as a love no one wants to leave. This one stuck with me. https://bgodinspired.com/?p=118332”
