%0 Report
        %A Costa-Font, Joan
%A Gyori, Mario
        %T Can Unearned Income Make Us Fitter? Evidence from Lottery Wins
        %D 2020
        %8 2020 Nov
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 13903
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp13903
        %X Although lower income is associated with overweight (and obesity), such an association is explained by a number of other confounding effects such as omitted variables (e.g., time preferences) explaining that income effect on overweight. We study the effect of unearned income shocks resulting from a lottery win (windfall income) on both overweight (alongside obesity and body mass index) distribution. We draw upon longitudinal data from the United Kingdom, a country where about half of a population plays the lottery. 
Our results suggest no evidence of contemporaneous effects of income on overweight, but a significant lagged effect. We find a reduction in overweight 12 months after a lottery win. A 1000-sterling win reduces overweight by 2-3 percentage points. Furthermore, we document a nonlinear effect up to 36 months after the lottery win, suggesting that small wins increase overweight and large wins reduce it. The effect of a lottery win varies depending on an individual's working hours and educational attainment. A lottery win among low education individuals decreases the risk of overweight.
        %K windfall income
%K body mass index (BMI)
%K obesity
%K overweight
%K income
%K lottery wins