Lottery is a game in which people pay money to win prizes determined by chance. It’s a popular pastime that has roots in ancient times, when the Old Testament instructed Moses to draw names for land, and Roman emperors gave away slaves by lottery. Benjamin Franklin even held a lottery to raise funds for cannons to defend Philadelphia against the British in the American Revolution. Although these early lotteries were often abused, they provided for all or part of a number of important public works projects in the United States and elsewhere, including construction of the British Museum, repair of bridges, and many other civic improvements. They were also used by some private promoters to help relieve debts and finance other ventures. Before they were outlawed in 1826, lotteries had become a major source of revenue for a variety of government and private purposes.
Since 1964, when New Hampshire established a state lottery, virtually every state has followed suit. The reasons for and against the adoption of a lottery have varied somewhat, but in general the arguments have emphasized the value of a state lottery as a source of “painless” revenue—money that doesn’t come from raising taxes on the middle class or working class. This argument has been especially effective in periods of economic stress, but it has also been successful in winning broad public support when a state’s fiscal situation is actually quite healthy.
The other major argument that lottery advocates rely on is the idea that the proceeds are used to benefit some specific state project or program, usually education. This is supposed to appeal to voters’ sense of moral obligation—to their belief that, even if they don’t win, they’re doing their civic duty by buying tickets. It’s a message that has been particularly powerful in the years since the financial crisis of 2008.
State lottery revenues increase dramatically after they are introduced, but they soon begin to level off or decline. In order to maintain or increase revenues, lotteries have had to introduce a number of innovations, such as video poker and keno games, and increase their promotion efforts.
A substantial percentage of lottery proceeds goes toward the prize pool, but the rest is divvied up between administrative and vendor costs and whatever projects each state designates. Typically, this includes public education, but some states use it to fund other worthy projects.
The fact that the odds of winning a lottery prize are long hasn’t stopped people from trying. Thousands of people have organized themselves into groups that buy large numbers of tickets to increase their chances of winning. Some of these groups are large enough to be considered a syndicate, but most aren’t. The most famous example is Stefan Mandel, a Romanian mathematician who won the lottery 14 times by getting investors to buy tickets that covered all possible combinations of numbers. In one case, he paid out more than $1.3 million to investors and kept only $97,000 for himself.
