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Does Money Strengthen Our Social Ties? Longitudinal Evidence of Lottery Winners

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  • Costa-Font, Joan

    (London School of Economics)

  • Powdthavee, Nattavudh

    (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Abstract

We study the effect of lottery wins on social ties and support network in the United Kingdom. On average, we find that winning more in the lottery increases the probability of meeting friends on most days, which is consistent with the complementary effect of income on social ties. The opposite is true with regards to social ties held for more instrumental reasons such as talking to neighbors. Winning more in the lottery also lessens an individual support network consistently with a substitution for instrumental social ties. However, further robustness checks reveal that the average lottery effects are driven by the few outliers of very large wins in the sample, thus suggesting that small to medium-sized wins (

Suggested Citation

  • Costa-Font, Joan & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2021. "Does Money Strengthen Our Social Ties? Longitudinal Evidence of Lottery Winners," IZA Discussion Papers 14489, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14489
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    1. Belief in a lottery curse is comforting, but winning lots of money does make you happy | Martha Gill
      by ? in Science news, comment and analysis | theguardian.com on 2024-12-21 17:30:22

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