How’s SpaceX stock doing today? Up 6% says the Google? Even if it had sagged to Morningstar’s number (see SpaceX is worth $63/share according to the most expert experts), there would still be a lot of newly minted rich people due to the expiration of employee lockups. It’s almost as though they won the lottery, which raises the question… Can one predict the effects of winning the lottery?
We estimate the effects of large, positive wealth shocks on marriage and fertility among Swedish lottery players. For male winners, wealth increases marriage formation and fertility and likely reduces divorce risk. For female winners, the only clear effect is a higher short-run (but not long-run) divorce risk. The gendered treatment effects are often similar to income gradients. Our findings align with models in which wives derive greater marginal utility from consumption when single than when married, whereas the opposite holds for husbands—but only if marital property is divided unequally upon divorce. We provide descriptive evidence consistent with such unequal division.
If the academics are correct, we should expect wedding bells for some of the male employees of SpaceX and that the female employees will be filing more divorce lawsuits than they otherwise would have.
(The “if marital property is divided unequally” phrase in the above, I think, refers to prenuptial agreements in which property is kept separate. Sweden’s divorce law allows for the possibility that a lottery prize could be joint property, in which case a female partner of a male winner could cash out via initiating a divorce and also the possibility that a man’s lottery prize could belong to him alone, in which case the female partner’s only way to spend some of it would be to stay married.)
Related:
- “‘These boots are made for walking’: why most divorce filers are women” (Brinig and Allen 2000), American Law and Economics Review, Volume 2, Issue 1
Quiz time: What is the percentage of females at (a) SpaceX; (b) NASA
Answers: (a) 14%; (b) 35%
Percentage of women at SpaceX = Percentage of women in the US workforce – Percentage of women in STEM jobs.
Nowadays, don’t those numbers need error bars?
You know Phil instead of the constant snark why not write a few longer-form essays based off of all that you know and have experienced especially when it comes to divorce and marriage. Something similar to http://www.realworlddivorce.com/Tips but especially without the bitterness (no, most Americans are not choosing to sit at home and not work and not get married, and no wealthy and hardworking Americans know better than to try and marry some woman who sits at home and does nothing).
This is insane to me. You literally live in the greatest country in the world and the only thing you can see is the things to complain about. Yeah, in America we like money and we like to scam people. That’s what makes us great. Welcome to the amazing no-holds-barred hold-on-to-your-pants rollercoaster ride of the American economy.
Have you ever considered that beyond the circlejerk of you and your typical readers who basically succeeded in life and got what they wanted there are plenty of other readers who might be there trying to make something of themselves in life and society? Why not continue the charitable work you have been doing so far and talk from a perspective of what could be instead of dooming all the time? Do you not realize that you live in the greatest country on Earth, that if literally any change is possible in the world then it is possible in this country that we live in?
Here is a prescient reminder from the past about the difference between two views of the world, from a younger Phil:
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2003/09/03/democrats-mediocrity-republicans-lottery-ticket/
Anon: The original post is about (1) a bunch of people who worked hard at SpaceX going from “rich on paper” to “actually rich”, (2) some additional marriages predicted by academics as a result of this new wealth, and (3) some additional divorces predicted by academics as a result of this new wealth. Isn’t the only way to interpret these three items as “dooming all the time” is starting from the belief that that wealth, marriage, and divorce are all bad?
Let me look at the 2003 post… I wrote that Democrats believed “Troublesome foreign dictators and rioting mobs can be appeased for a few years if we look the other way while they build more advanced rockets and nuclear bombs”. That now seems to be a near-universal belief among Americans! I tagged Republicans with “Restive Muslims worldwide will be awed by American military power into abandoning their dreams.” That didn’t age well. The “restive Muslims” have mostly been imported into the U.S. and there is no American of any political party who seems to think that American military power can be used effectively except against countries around the Caribbean.
> Have you ever considered that beyond the circlejerk of you and your typical readers who basically succeeded in life
Beyond the local “circlejerk” that is Phil’s blog is the mean old Internet, a figure-8-jerk of infinite stupidity. Excuuuse me for finding comfort in a tiny tidal pool of rational discussion. People here also tend to be conservative, so take your accurate terminology for woke political discussions and wash your mouth out with soap.
Success? Try going to an upscale mall, bro/grrl/other, and witness the success of immigrants with wife-harems 5 wide shopping at Polo and Gucci, wrapped head-to-toe in rags. My wardrobe is mostly Wal*Mart (and Target for more formal occasions like keg parties).
Around here, only Phil can use the word “prescient”, and then only about himself. If you want a circlejerk of ICE sightings and where the best queer graffiti at head on over to r/lansing. Leave us to our long tail of declining U.S. exceptionalism.
P.S. I <<<3 woke shills too.
Holy hippie, Batman, don’t read the comments for this video:
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2026/08/07/plagiarist-claudine-gay-getting-paid-3-1-million-year-after-resigning-from-harvard/#comment-423127
if you don’t want to witness a woke afrocirclefinger. Curse you, Neo Hippy (I thought you were trying to avoid reality.) America 2026, Freaky Friday, Every Day!
This blog is full of old men complaining about strong independent women and complain about unjust divorce system . My question is who is forcing/putting a gun to the head to marry. As men we have lot of options to stay single and have excellent sexual life.
@OAG
You are of course welcome. My fav?
> Yasssss Black Girl Magic!🥰 Thank you Ford Company for the representation!!✊🏽👊🏽❤️🖤💚
Happy Freaky Friday!
SingleGuy: What do you mean by “unjust divorce system”? The divorce system in any given state or country is “just” by definition, since each party is represented by an attorney and the final divorce occurs after a trial. There is nothing more “just” than whatever a judge rules after a trial. That said, the outcomes might be completely different across a state border or a national border (see http://www.realworlddivorce.com/ ). So you just have to wrap your head around the idea that a $0 transfer can be a “just” outcome and that, on the same facts, a $100 million transfer can also be a “just” outcome.
Should a man avoid getting married for financial reasons? Consider the man who is dating a receptionist at an NVIDIA branch office. Getting married in that case is almost sure to be more lucrative, even accounting for the possibility of divorce and associated legal fees, than if the man were to take a median job that requires a college degree and then work full-time for 50 years.
@Phil you are correct, the man should marry receptionist in that scenario. Why cannot men do what women do , marry up or stay single. Instead of this, we men think with dick when we are young and later complain about alimony payments.
SingleGuy: One thing about the future is that it is tough to predict. We knew a woman in Maskachusetts who married a college classmate who seemed to have at least a promising earning future as her own. She began to earn way more money than he did, though. He quit his career and chose a 100% leisure lifestyle (“leisure” included having sex with 25-year-old females). When the kids were out of the house and the high-earning wife was getting closer to a planned early retirement, he sued her and made bank on both property division and alimony. I don’t think that she could have predicted that this well-educated fit man would eventually become a successful alimony plaintiff.
> My question is who is forcing/putting a gun to the head to marry.
Her pappy?
DHZ: I’m a little concerned about SingleGuy’s “have excellent sexual life” comment. I hope that he has read https://nypost.com/2017/05/27/hamptons-bachelors-are-getting-vasectomies-so-golddiggers-cant-trap-them/
@philg
They learn us country bois in the hillbilly manosphere to not throw used rubbers in the trash pail. Throw ’em in the outhouse hole, before draining the lizard — helps denature the spermatozoa proteins real good. Ain’t no barefoot skank gonna rummage through the trash to be my baby’s momma. Regards.
> He quit his career and chose a 100% leisure lifestyle (“leisure” included having sex with 25-year-old females).
LOL! According to ChatGPT:
> Yes, non-Germans can legally register and contract their marriage in Germany. You do not need to be a German citizen, and in many cases, you do not even need to be a resident of Germany to marry at a local civil registry office (Standesamt).
Would this be a more graceful way compared to pre-nups and the distasteful divorce hassle for Americans?
NA: I’m not sure if the “check the box to keep property separate” from Germany would be considered a valid prenuptial agreement in a U.S. court when one spouse finally sues the other. Remember that if the married couple live in, for example, Boston, there is nothing to prevent one spouse from filing a lawsuit in a Massachusetts family court. At that point, even if the German box check were considered a valid prenup, it might not matter because any prenuptial agreement can be invalidated by a Massachusetts court if the result is considered unfair at the time of the divorce. It’s the “second look” test described in http://www.realworlddivorce.com/MassachusettsPrenuptialAgreements
(Just determining whether the German check box should apply could easily cost $250,000 in legal fees in a Massachusetts court.)
It’s a study of swedish lottery players who were probably all lower class. 40 years ago, unequal marriages just applied to the working class while classes which could afford to invest in stonks had more equal marriages. Of course, thanks to the fed enriching asset prices to offset falling wages, owning stonks today isn’t just for the upper class.
Are you sure about the “40 years ago”? Table 1 of the paper shows that “Triss Monthly” covered prizes awarded 1997-2011 and Table 2 show that most of the big prizes were from Triss Monthly and Triss Lumpsum” (prizes awarded 1994-2011). 2011 was 15 years ago.
Separately, I don’t know what you mean by “lower class”. We’re informed that, due to the size and generosity of the Swedish welfare state, there were and are no “lower class” people in Sweden. Here’s a Somali immigrant to Sweden with no job who nonetheless was able to afford a 5-bedroom apartment for herself and six children (she divorced her husband, but perhaps not because of anyone winning the lottery: “common to maximize social welfare payouts”): https://x.com/visegrad24/status/2005018018099888473?s=20