A sudden financial windfall appears to increase the likelihood that men marry and have children, while temporarily raising the risk of divorce for women. These findings, based on nearly 77,000 Swedish lottery players, provide evidence that money can shape family life, possibly in different ways for men and women. The research was published in the Journal of Human Resources.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker argued that individuals make family decisions by weighing how much satisfaction they expect from being married, single, or a parent. “Economists have long argued that money shapes decisions about marriage, divorce and having children,” study co-author Anastasia Terskaya, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Barcelona and a research affiliate at the Institute of Economics of Barcelona, told PsyPost. “Gary Becker’s work in the 1960s-70s is the classic example.”
Money may also shape what people look for in a partner. A study covered by PsyPost in 2026 found that women’s preference for wealthier partners decreased when they had more economic power, though that research measured stated preferences in a simulated society rather than real-world behavior.
Testing these theories in the real world is notoriously difficult because people who earn higher incomes usually differ from those who earn less in many other ways, such as their education levels or career ambitions. “The fact that richer men are more likely to be married doesn’t tell us whether money causes marriage,” Terskaya said.
To isolate the pure effect of money, scientists look for sudden, unexpected influxes of cash that are unrelated to a person’s background or behavior. “Lotteries get around this problem because the size of the prize is random,” Terskaya explained. By comparing people who played the exact same lotteries but won different amounts by random chance, researchers can estimate how wealth itself alters life trajectories.
The research, authored by Terskaya alongside David Cesarini of New York University and colleagues, aimed to document the long-term effects of such unearned wealth on family formation. “This question has important policy implications,” she added. “Fertility has been falling across much of the world, and many countries now have birth rates below the replacement rate of roughly 2.1 children per woman, the level needed to keep a population stable over the long run.”
“Many governments worry about the consequences, such as aging populations and pressure on pension and welfare systems,” she continued. “This raises a key question: can money actually persuade people to have more children, and if so, how much would it take?”
To conduct the study, the researchers analyzed data from three major Swedish lotteries: a monthly subscription lottery, a scratch-ticket lottery, and savings accounts that paid lower interest in exchange for automatic entry into lottery draws. They matched the records of 76,859 unique lottery players to government administrative registries that track marriage, divorce, and childbirth over time. The lottery players closely resembled other Swedes of similar age and sex: 33 percent were married, compared with 35 percent of the comparison group, and their incomes were similar, though players were somewhat less likely to have attended college (24 percent versus 30 percent).
The players were grouped tightly based on their exact lottery participation, such as buying the same number of subscription tickets in a given month. “Because we compare players who faced the same odds but won different amounts, our setup is close to a randomized experiment,” Terskaya observed. “That let us ask cleanly: what happens to people’s family lives when they suddenly get richer?”
The study focused on adults aged 18 to 44 at the time of their lottery win, tracking family outcomes at two-year, five-year, and ten-year horizons. Winnings varied widely, with the researchers expressing the effects per 1 million Swedish kronor (SEK), after taxes. This baseline amount, equivalent to about $140,000 in 2010, was more than five times a typical Swede’s annual disposable income.
The findings indicate that wealth boosts marriage prospects, but primarily for men. For unmarried male winners, a 1 million SEK windfall increased the probability of getting married within five years by 4.7 percentage points. Given a baseline marriage rate of about 16 percent for this group, the jump represented a roughly 30 percent increase. This boost appeared to be concentrated among men who had below-median incomes before winning.
For unmarried female winners, the effect on marriage was small and not statistically significant. However, the difference between men’s and women’s responses was not large enough to rule out chance, so the gender gap in marriage is suggestive rather than firmly established.
“Even in Sweden, one of the world’s most gender-equal societies, men’s and women’s responses differ,” Terskaya remarked. “The absence of an effect on marriage for women, combined with the positive effect for men, likely indicates that men and women have different preferences regarding marriage.”
When it came to divorce, the results diverged by gender. Married women who won the lottery experienced a sudden spike in their likelihood of divorce. A 1 million SEK prize nearly doubled their short-term divorce risk, raising it by almost 4 percentage points over a baseline of 4 percent within two years.
“The divorce effect for women is sharp and short-lived,” Terskaya pointed out. “This suggests that women still face financial barriers to leaving a marriage.”
Because this effect faded at the ten-year horizon, the researchers suggest the wealth likely accelerated divorces that were already under consideration. The short-term spike was also concentrated among women who had below-median incomes before winning. The researchers interpret this as a sign that the lottery provided a sudden rush of financial independence, giving women who were previously financially vulnerable the resources needed to leave their marriages.
Terskaya warned against a common misreading. “‘Money makes women leave their husbands.’ Not quite,” she said. “The effect fades over time, so wealth mostly changes when already-troubled marriages end, not whether they end.”
For married men, the lottery winnings had the opposite effect: wealth appeared to reduce their risk of divorce. However, this was the least reliable result in the study, as discussed below.
The divorce findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2026, which found that among opposite-sex couples in Finland, higher income for the secondary earner, usually the wife, was linked to greater divorce risk, while higher income for the primary earner was linked to more stable marriages. That study relied on observational income data rather than sudden windfalls.
The researchers also found that children function as what economists call a normal good, meaning people tend to have more of them when their financial resources increase. Ten years after a lottery win, male winners had an average of 0.056 more children per 1 million SEK won, amounting to a 14 percent increase in fertility. The researchers roughly estimate that 20 to 40 percent of men’s fertility increase traces to higher marriage rates and fewer divorces. “Part of this happens because wealth helps them marry and stay married,” Terskaya added.
Women’s fertility saw a slight positive bump, but the results were not statistically significant. As with marriage, the researchers could not statistically confirm that men and women responded differently. The researchers noted that the gender gap in fertility was strongest among winners over 35. The authors suggest this may reflect women’s age-related decline in fertility, which would point to differing constraints rather than differing preferences.
“In absolute terms, the effects are modest, even though some look large in percentage terms,” Terskaya said. “One way to see it: in the full sample, each 1 million SEK raises the number of children born over ten years by about 0.033. That works out to roughly 30 million SEK (around $4 million) in windfall wealth per additional child.”
When the researchers combined their data with earlier lottery studies, they estimated that every $100,000 in windfall wealth increases the odds that a single person marries in the next five years by roughly 1.2 percentage points. “So money clearly matters, but large cash transfers would be an expensive way to change marriage or birth rates,” Terskaya said.
“Large, unexpected wealth shocks affected family outcomes differently by gender,” said Jeong Jin Yu, a professor at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China who was not involved in the study. “They increased men’s marriage and fertility, while women experienced a short-term increase in divorce risk.”
“The findings confirm that men’s economic resources are associated with marriage and family formation,” he added. “They also extend previous research by using lottery winnings as a plausibly random wealth shock rather than relying only on correlations.”
To explain the gender differences in divorce, the authors point out that wealth increases bargaining power, or how much say each spouse has in household decisions. In Sweden, the legal default is an equal split in a divorce, but registry data suggests the wealthier spouse often walks away with a much larger share in practice. The authors suggest that if women carry a heavier domestic workload or have less autonomy in a marriage, sudden financial independence might make single life more appealing, while men might find that wealth enhances their married life.
“Confidence is relatively high in the main findings because the study uses a large administrative dataset and a lottery-based research design,” Yu told PsyPost. “However, confidence is relatively lower regarding the explanations for the gender differences, since the data do not directly measure marital satisfaction, relationship quality, or decision-making power within relationships.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study is based entirely in Sweden, a country with a strong social welfare system, low legal barriers to divorce, and relatively high social acceptance of non-traditional family structures.
“Context matters,” Terskaya emphasized. “We expect the results to carry over best to other high-income welfare states, especially the Nordic countries, and much less to developing countries.” The way wealth influences marriage and fertility might look different in nations with more traditional gender norms or weaker social safety nets.
Yu cautioned against reading too much into the results. “Readers should not conclude that money automatically causes marriage, children, or divorce,” he said. “The study reports average effects, not outcomes that apply to every individual. The findings may also reflect Sweden’s particular legal, economic, and cultural context.”
There is also some uncertainty regarding the exact mechanisms behind the male marriage boost. The researchers note that it is difficult to determine if men are marrying more because they have reached a basic threshold of absolute financial security, or if their relative rank among other men has simply improved. If relative rank dictates marriage prospects, a general increase in wealth across an entire society would not necessarily boost overall marriage rates.
“Making one man richer is not the same as making everyone richer,” Terskaya highlighted. “If wealthier men marry more partly because they become more attractive relative to other men, a rise in everyone’s income would raise marriage and fertility less than our estimates suggest. Our numbers may therefore be an upper bound for such general increases. This is important to keep in mind if a government wants to use our estimates to justify a universal basic income, which raises everyone’s income.”
Finally, the finding that wealth reduces divorce risk for men was sensitive to how the researchers defined their sample. When they expanded the analysis to include older adults up to age 64, the stabilizing effect on male marriages became much smaller and less reliable, suggesting the original result may be fragile.
“The finding that men’s marriages become more stable is the least robust result,” Terskaya acknowledged. “It weakens or disappears under other age ranges, definitions and statistical tests, so we put less weight on it.”
“The paper leaves several open questions,” Terskaya told PsyPost. She would like to learn how couples’ property is split in practice when marriages end, and whether the same patterns would emerge in nations with different marriage laws and cultural expectations about family.
“Future research should examine relationship quality, relationship duration, partner characteristics, financial decision-making, and how wealth affects each partner’s independence and decision-making power,” Yu added. “It would also be useful to test whether similar patterns appear with other types of wealth and in different countries.”
The study, “Fortunate Families? The Effects of Wealth on Marriage and Fertility,” was authored by David Cesarini, Erik Lindqvist, Robert Östling, and Anastasia Terskaya.