The authors persuaded the Swedish statistical authorities to try to survey every winner of three of the country’s major lotteries over more than a decade, and then used government records to track other aspects of the winners’ lives. The researchers examined the same indicators for Swedes who had entered but lost the same lotteries, or who won minor prizes.

Their surveys took several approaches to measuring subjective well-being. The measure most robustly linked to income asks people how satisfied they are with their lives as a whole. By contrast, responses to a question asking about happiness showed less of a connection to lottery winnings, and these effects could not be reliably distinguished from the effects of chance. Social scientists widely view questions about life satisfaction as eliciting a broad-based evaluation of one’s life while questions about happiness yield responses more related to current moods or feelings.

A further set of questions probed the mental health of respondents, finding that greater income had no effect, although in related work, the same authors find that lottery winners are prescribed fewer mental health drugs. I interpret this as suggestive but not conclusive evidence that wealth improves one’s mental health.

Other studies by these authors — sometimes with other scholars — have tracked the economic lives of these lottery winners to further explore the consequences of wealth. Contrary to popular stereotypes, those who win hundreds of thousands of dollars don’t blow most of their winnings at once. Instead, they slowly spend their newfound wealth over many years. Many don’t quit their jobs, but they do tend to work a bit less and retire a bit earlier.

Surprisingly, the increase in wealth caused by winning the lottery has few effects on the physical health of the winners or their children. It seems possible that family wealth might have quite different effects in a less egalitarian society, like the United States.

These results provide strong evidence in support of the standard economic view that money increases well-being, albeit not in an entirely uniform manner. It runs counter to the view championed by many psychologists that people largely adapt to their circumstances — including their financial situation.

In an email, Mr. Cesarini characterized that perspective as the “widespread misperception that science has proved that winning the lottery often makes people miserable.”