Being a Murder Victim v. Winning The Lottery: Calculating Happiness

I was intrigued to come across a ready-reckoner for calculating the size that a US lottery jackpot needs to be before it is worth the investment of a one dollar ticket. The values need to be adjusted to account for UK jackpots and the greater price of a UK ticket. It's a pretty sobering read to drill down into what the return has to be to justify the expenditure of a dollar.

...for a $1.00 ticket, the amount of the grand prize had to be at least equal to the odds for winning it. In the case of the Powerball lottery, that means the grand prize has to be at least worth $120,526,660 to make the value of the benefit worth the $1.00 cost of the risk.

According to this source, the jackpot has to be more than 120 million dollars to justify buying a 1 dollar ticket. So, very roughly (using all my fingers and toes), that means we need a jackpot of around 102 million pounds to make it worth the financial risk of investing 1 pound. Of course, this doesn't take different population sizes into account, it's just a straight conversion at the exchange rate of 1.40 dollars to the pound.

I have previously quoted the figure (I read it in a news summary) that we are 14x more likely to be murdered than to win the lottery. And I have used that as an argument that we are theory poor if our sole response to "What would make you happy?" is "Winning the lottery".

It is not unusual for people to tell me that winning the lottery is the only thing that would make them happy. I realise that this is a metaphor for a simile that I like-a Jane Eyre-ity, signifying an unexpected influx of money and good fortune. However, I am frequently told by people that they have no other strategies for happiness. For some people it truly does seem as if happiness is contingent upon winning a large sum or being the undiscovered heir to a substantial inheritance.

I've felt for some time that for most of us, relying upon a Jane Eyre-ity is not a reliable strategy for cultivating happiness. And I've been slightly puzzled by the ratio of likelihood of being a murder victim v. a lottery jackpot winner. According to a study by the Crime and Society Foundation, you are nearly 6x more likely to be murdered in a poor neighbourhood than in the richest ones. And you are much more likely to be a murder victim if you are a young man. A summary in The Times claims:

the average Briton is 176 times more likely to be murdered than to win the lottery with a single ticket. But there is good news: 99.88% of people are not murdered.

"176x more likely to be murdered than to win the lottery." Is happiness really dependent on those odds? I think that we need to start spreading our bets, reducing those odds and other risk-reduction jargon. We need a Happystance.

So, in future, my response to, "I'll be happy if I win the lottery" will be, "You're absolutely right and I hope that it happens soon for you. However, you are 176x more likely to be murdered than to win the lottery. Given that happiness is good for you, your family and everyone who knows you-and you could start doing something about it right now-what is your back-up plan?".

Copyright 2006, Tony Plant Happystance Project