Getting Wealthier and Healthier? Evidence From the Spanish Christmas Lottery

Abstract: This paper uses the Spanish Christmas Lottery to provide new evidence about the relationship between wealth and health for adults and infants. Using a difference-in-difference design across provinces and time, I explore how overall health status, hospitalization rates, neonatal health, and alcohol consumption are affected by lottery outcomes. For adults, my results suggest no immediate effect on the probability of reporting good or very good health status. Instead, there seems to be a long-lasting effect in provinces that have won the lottery at least once. Moreover, hospitalization rates within provinces also remain unchanged. I rule out that exogenous lottery wealth has an economically significant impact on infant birth weight. Finally, I find that alcohol consumption is affected on the intensive margin but not at the extensive margin.