What is a Lottery?

A lottery is a gambling game in which players purchase tickets for a chance to win a prize by matching numbers drawn at random. Prizes may be cash or goods. The game has a long history, and it is played in many countries. Some are run by governments, while others are private enterprises. It is illegal to operate a lottery in some places.

The casting of lots for decisions and fates has a long tradition in human culture, including multiple instances in the Bible. But distributing prizes through lotteries has a much shorter record, and it dates to at least the 15th century in the Low Countries. In Bruges, for example, the first recorded public lotteries were used to raise funds for town fortifications and help the poor. During the 17th and 18th centuries, a wide variety of private and public enterprises used lotteries to raise money, including building roads, canals, wharves, and colleges. Lotteries even financed the colonial ventures of Harvard and Yale.

State lotteries were designed as a way for states to raise revenue for a host of public services without having to increase taxes on middle- and working-class taxpayers. But they have also been criticized for regressivity and for encouraging problem gambling. These criticisms stem from the fact that, once a lottery is established, state officials typically make policy on a piecemeal basis and in incremental steps, with little general oversight. The result is that, by the time a lottery becomes well established, state officials have inherited policies and dependences on revenues that they can do little to change or address.

Lottery officials often advertise their games with messages that imply they are harmless and fun, giving people a chance to fantasize about winning fortunes for the cost of a couple of bucks. But the reality is that the majority of people who play the lottery are in fact serious gamblers who spend significant portions of their incomes on tickets. The message that the lottery is harmless and fun obscures that reality and conceals the regressivity of the program.

The rapid rise in state lotteries in the post-World War II period was fueled by the belief that these programs would allow states to expand their array of public services without placing particularly onerous burdens on the middle and working classes. This assumption reflected a particular view of state government at that time, with its limited set of functions and a relatively small social safety net. Since the mid-1960s, however, state governments have expanded their array of services and shifted their taxation strategy. Lotteries have accompanied this expansion, and they now generate more than one-third of state tax revenue.