Lottery is a form of gambling where a single number is drawn to determine the winner. It is a popular activity in the United States that generates billions of dollars annually. People play the lottery for various reasons including believing it will give them a better life. It is important to understand how the lottery works and how it impacts our economy.

State-sponsored lotteries are a major source of state revenue and have won broad public approval since New Hampshire launched the modern era in 1964. Unlike many forms of government spending, lottery proceeds can be earmarked for specific public purposes, making them attractive to taxpayers anxious about looming budget crises. In fact, lottery popularity correlates closely with the perceived need for a particular public good, such as education, but not with the objective fiscal circumstances of the state.

Although the casting of lots to decide matters of material gain has a long history (Nero was a fan), state-run lotteries are an especially recent innovation. Until the mid-nineteen-seventies, most Americans had no idea that governments ran lotteries or that they were even legal. At the time, many states faced a dilemma: they needed to raise revenue for services like roads and schools, but they could not count on the support of an anti-tax electorate.

In an attempt to placate their constituents, some states decided to legalize lotteries. They legislated a monopoly for themselves, typically by creating a public corporation to run the games (instead of licensing private firms in exchange for a portion of the profits), began with a modest number of simple games, and then, due to constant pressure to increase revenues, progressively expanded the game’s size and complexity.

The strategy worked, at least initially. As a result, the first decade of the twenty-first century was an exceptionally prosperous one for state budgets. But by the late nineteen-eighties, that prosperity had waned; working-class families saw their pensions and health-care coverage erode, unemployment increased, the wealth gap widened, and our national promise that hard work and education would make everyone better off than their parents grew increasingly implausible.

In this context, lottery sales took off. Super-sized jackpots fueled public interest, and the enticing possibility of hitting it big was enough to overcome many people’s disutility of a monetary loss.

Lottery sales continue to rise, but the odds of winning a jackpot are getting worse. As a result, some states have had to introduce “instant games,” with smaller prizes but higher odds of winning. It is likely that the trend will continue, and that some states will ultimately have to abandon their old model of relying on a single game to maintain and expand revenues. This will probably have significant implications for both the economics of lotteries and the moral legitimacy of gambling. As the debate over sports betting begins in Oregon and elsewhere, it is worth recalling how state lotteries have shaped the way we think about gambling. And how the moral justifications for gambling have been hollowed out.