%0 Journal Article %A Mikael Lindahl %T Estimating the Effect of Income on Health and Mortality Using Lottery Prizes as an Exogenous Source of Variation in Income %D 2005 %R 10.3368/jhr.XL.1.144 %J Journal of Human Resources %P 144-168 %V XL %N 1 %X A vast literature has established a strong positive relation between income and health status and a negative relation with mortality. This paper studies the effects of income on health and mortality, using only the part of income variation due to a truly exogenous factor: monetary lottery prizes of individuals. The findings are that higher income causally generates good health and that this effect is of a similar magnitude as when traditional estimation techniques are used. A 10 percent income increase improves health by about 4–5 percent of a standard deviation. %U https://jhr.uwpress.org/content/wpjhr/XL/1/144.full.pdf