It's a Sunday morning, and you are just surfacing from sleep. You turn over in bed, and put your arm around your loving, faithful partner. Life is good.

Rewind.

It's a Sunday morning, and you are just surfacing from sleep. You turn over in bed, and put your arm around your pile of �50 notes. There are 1,200 of them.

Life - apparently - is just as good.

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A study by two economists claims to have found that, contrary to generations of wisdom, money can actually make you happy.

A lasting marriage brings as much happiness as having an extra �60,000 added to your pay packet, Professor Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick and David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College in the US say.

Similarly, losing a job causes �40,000-worth of unhappiness.

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The study of 100,000 people randomly sampled across the UK and US also compared satisfaction and mental well-being rates in other countries.

It found there had been a decline in the number of people married (72% in the early 1970s, 55% by the late 90s). But married people said they were much happier than the unmarrieds.

Getting divorced, separated, or widowed made people much more unhappy than losing their jobs.

The happiest people were women, the highly educated, married couples, and those whose parents have not divorced, the report says. Women who co-habit are happier than those who live alone, but are not as happy as those who are married.

Happiness and satisfaction with life tend to be shaped like a U or J, it says, with high levels in youth and old age, but a drop in the 30s.

Uneasy feeling

Mr Oswald told the BBC that the study showed that by putting a value on happiness showed economists cared about more than just money.

"It is measuring the really important things in life... We are showing how important marriage is to people in this country." But many people will feel uncomfortable at the notion that happiness can be bought.

Tales of woe of multi-million pound winners are not unusual: the story of Viv Nicholson is currently playing in the West End in Spend, Spend, Spend.

Nicholson won �152,000 on the pools in 1963, and pledged to spend her way through life. But the money did not bring her happiness, she married five times, hit the bottle and was declared bankrupt.

She is now working as a hairdresser in her West Yorkshire home town.

Change of mind

So what about the conventional wisdom that you couldn't put a monetary value on love?

Mr Oswald said he used to believe it, but had changed his mind.

Andrew Oswald: Happily married, but not a non-financial millionaire

"That's what I used to think. But I have come round, having looked at many different kinds of data, to believe you can get a good measure of mental well-being. We can weigh up money against other aspects of our life.

"And what comes out clearly from our kind of research is how important personal things are, non-economic, non-financial matters."

Asked if he was a non-financial millionaire himself, Mr Oswald said: "I'm not a millionaire, but I have a lasting marriage, and that's worth a lot of money to me.