Lottery Singapore
In a recent study, we examined the effects of lottery winnings on happiness and life satisfaction. We used a new dataset from the intensely lottery-playing country of Singapore, and discovered that winners were not more satisfied with their lives than other people.
We found that the coefficient for the variable for lottery winnings was small and statistically insignificantly different from zero (as in column 1 of Table 2). This is similar to what we observed in a previous study, which also used a new dataset on lottery-expenditure variables to estimate happiness and life satisfaction equations.
Our findings were replicated in another study that looked at a different group of lottery winners in Singapore. We did not find a significant increase in well-being for the lottery winners in this study, but we did observe that their winnings were more likely to be spent on non-lottery activities than other individuals.
We also discovered that the amount of money Singaporeans spent on lottery tickets was higher in 2015 than it was in 2014. The rise in lottery-related spending was driven by both online and offline sales, including purchases made by customers at physical outlets. The number of outlets selling the 99JITU TOTO form was up by about 50%, as compared to the same period in 2014.