4 reasons why you should be happy you didn’t win Powerball

Winning numbers for the record-breaking $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot were announced Wednesday night, but if you didn't have the winning ticket, worry not.

Last night's lucky numbers were 4, 8, 19, 27, 34, and the Powerball was 10. In a tweet late Wednesday night, officials confirmed the winning tickets were sold in California, Tennessee, and Florida.

Winners who beat the one in 292 million odds have yet to be announced. Although you may feel like your dreams have been crushed, you're probably better off losing.

Here are four reasons why you should be glad you weren't among this year's supposedly lucky winners:

Research has shown that rich people are actually less generous—and a little sketchy.

In one study, participants were given $10 and those with a yearly salary less than $25,000 gave away nearly 50 percent more than those who made more than $200,000 annually.

In another study, rich people were more likely than poor people to eat candy they were told was reserved for children.

Your wallet may not be overflowing, but hey, at least your heart hasn't shrunk.

Life post-lottery isn't all that it's cracked up to be, at least according to financial consultant Don McNay.

“So many of them wind up unhappy or wind up broke ... people commit suicide," McNay, who has advised lottery winners in the past, told Time. “It’s the curse of the lottery because it made their lives worse instead of improving them.” ​

Jack Whittaker, a 2002 winner who took home the $315 million jackpot would agree.

"Since I won the lottery, I think there is no control for greed," he told ABC News. "I think if you have something, there's always someone else that wants it. I wish I'd torn that ticket up."

Whether they don't know how to manage their assets, forget what's important in life, or are used by people around them, lottery winners don't have it easy.

It's true that people who have enough money to get by are happier, but when we're talking about huge jackpots, that much money doesn't actually improve your well-being.

In fact, a famous study by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton found that money stops making you happy if you make more than $75,000 a year.

"Perhaps $75,000 is a threshold beyond which further increases in income no longer improve individuals' ability to do what matters most to their emotional well-being, such as spending time with people they like, avoiding pain and disease, and enjoying leisure," the authors wrote.

Sure, $75,000 is more than the average American makes, but you don't have to be filthy rich to be happy. Plus, 70 percent of people who acquire large sums of money all at once lose it within a few years, according to the National Endowment for Financial Education​.

Even if money did pave the road to happiness (which it doesn't), winning the lottery wouldn't be the best road to take.

Instead of collectively spending $1.5 billion for one person to become unnecessarily rich and likely miserable, wouldn't the money be better spent making the world a better place?

With $1.5 billion, we could get 5 percent closer to ending world hunger and 1 percent closer to ending poverty. And with just $50—the price of 25 lottery tickets—you could feed a girl in a developing nation for a year.

Maybe next year, we should give the money we'd spend on tickets to someone in need. Then, there might be fewer people desperate to win the lottery in the first place.