It makes the world go round, it can't buy you love, it doesn't grow on trees and it is certainly the root of at least some evil and according to the research of an eminent professor at the University of Warwick, there are only a few things which put a bigger smile on your face than a huge pile of money.

Professor Andrew Oswald and Dr Jonathan Gardner have been researching the impact of financial windfalls on people's happiness for more than a decade, with the help of 9,000 families in Britain. They measured individuals' psychological health using standard strain indicators to gauge their levels of happiness. Over the course of their study, several of the sample group had wind windfalls of hundreds of thousands of pounds, enabling the researchers to observe the impact.

The results are pretty conclusive. It doesn't take a huge amount of money to have an immediate impact, with sums as small as £1000 proving to have a reasonable effect on people's outlook on life. But to really make a mark and have a permanent effect on the happiness of an individual, it takes a lot more, with a cool million pounds being required to leave a person in a euphoric state for an extended period of time.

Professor Oswald said: " We have found effects from even tiny windfalls of 1,000 pounds. And the more you get, the better you feel." He did however have a warning for anyone who believes that the pursuit of happiness equates to the pursuit of money, saying: "There is a strong link between money and happiness but it is a serious mistake to believe that the main influence on happiness is money."

Indeed, despite the headlines all being about the effect of money, the research found that two other factors had an even bigger impact on the long-term happiness of an individual. Even those who are making do with more modest means need not despair altogether. Good health and a loving relationship were guaranteed to bring sunshine into one's life. The biggest impacts are made by a stable marriage and good health, while losing a job or getting divorced had the most negative effect.

The research also found that happiness follows a u-shaped pattern, with people beginning life happy but becoming discontent in their early 30s, before their happiness recovered and continued increasing into their 60s.