A lottery is a game of chance in which tickets are sold for a prize that may be cash or goods. Lotteries are popular in many countries, including the United States. Lottery profits are often used for public purposes. While some critics view lottery participation as an addictive form of gambling, others use it to support good causes in their communities.
Lotteries are an ancient form of entertainment. They date back to the Roman Empire, where they were used as a kind of party game during Saturnalia festivities, and even before then in various cultures. The drawing of lots for prizes—whether of expensive dinnerware or the right to kill a goat in ritual sacrifice—was an important part of many societies’ spiritual lives, and there are references to lotteries in the Bible.
In modern times, the concept of lotteries became more standardized. In the seventeenth century, they were common in the Low Countries, where towns used them to raise money for a variety of purposes, from town fortifications to charity for the poor. Lotteries were also hailed as a painless alternative to taxation, which tended to be unpopular at the time.
By the eighteenth century, the game had spread to England, where Queen Elizabeth I chartered the country’s first state-owned Staatsloterij in 1726. The name “lottery” was derived from the Dutch word for fate (“lot”).
A key aspect of lotteries is that a percentage of the pool must be deducted for organizing and promoting the games, and a smaller share of the funds goes as taxes and profit to the lottery’s organizer or sponsors. The remaining sum available for prizes is typically divided into a few large jackpots and a larger number of smaller ones, which are then wagered again in the next round. The draw for the larger jackpot draws more attention, but it is usually a little less than a one-in-ten-million chance of winning.
The fervor for the big jackpots has coincided with a decline in economic security for most Americans, Cohen writes. The nineteen-seventies and -eighties brought a widening of the income gap, the erosion of pensions and job security, soaring health care costs, increasing poverty, rising unemployment, and a general sense that America’s long-held promise that hard work would make you richer than your parents was no longer true.
When this reality collided with the growing awareness of how much money could be made in the lottery business, advocates of legalization began to repackage the idea. Instead of arguing that a lottery could float an entire state’s budget, they began to say it would pay for a single line item—invariably a popular government service, such as education, but sometimes elder care or aid for veterans—and that a vote in favor of a lottery was a vote for that specific purpose. This new argument helped overcome long-standing ethical objections to the practice. It also gave moral cover to voters who approved of state-run lotteries for other reasons.