Income windfalls and overweight: evidence from lottery wins

Joan Costa-Font and Mario Györi

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We examine the impact of an income windfall (from lottery win) on an individual's overweight and Body Mass Index (BMI). We use longitudinal data from the United Kingdom, where a large proportion of the population plays the lottery, and retrieve income effect estimates using time and individual specific fixed effects alongside a set of relevant controls. Although our findings suggest any income windfall may lead to a contemporaneous increase in overweight we document evidence that a £1,000 win reduces the probability of overweight in the range by up to 3% points 12 months after the lottery win. Estimates are heterogeneous across working hours and educational attainment. A £1000 lottery win reduces the risk of overweight among low educated individuals by 4.5–5 percentual points (pp)12 months after the lottery win.

JEL-codes: I12 I18 J30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2023-05-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv
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Published in Empirical Economics, 1, May, 2023, 64(5), pp. 2005–2026. ISSN: 0377-7332

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/116679/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Income windfalls and overweight: evidence from lottery wins (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:116679

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