On Fri, 23 Jul 1999, Michael W. Steele wrote:

>
> >Most lottery winners in real life are not happier than before they won.
>
> Hmph, I won $570,603.54 in the 1987 Florida Lottery. I'm
> happy as a F***ing lark =)
>
> LOL, sorry -- couldn't pass up the humor I saw in that
> obvious line of bullshit John fed you. No offense John,

There have been several psychological studies assessing the
happiness of lottery winners. Aside from a high immediately
after winning, most revert back to their former levels of
happiness.

http://mentalhelp.net/articles/happy1.htm
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/baschap4.htm
http://www.apa.org/releases/lifevent.html
http://www.hope.edu/academic/psychology/myerstxt/happy/happy2.html
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/~SEGLea/ecopsy/happy.html

Some of these pages are long, so just do a search on
"lottery." The last one has references to journal articles if
you want to research it further on your own.

--
John H. Kim
kim@...