In an era of skyrocketing inequality and limited social mobility, lottery players can feel like their last, best or only shot at a better life. That’s why so many people play — and why they spend $80 billion a year on tickets. But there’s more to the story than just that. Lotteries also convey a powerful message about what it means to be successful in our culture: it’s all about luck and chance.
The casting of lots has a long record in human history, but the use of it for material gain is more recent. The first recorded public lottery to award prize money was held in 1466 in Bruges, Belgium. Throughout the 17th century, cities and towns across the Low Countries organized lotteries to raise money for a variety of town needs.
By the early 1800s, moral and religious sensibilities started to turn against gambling of any kind, including the lottery. Denmark Vesey, an enslaved man in Charleston, South Carolina, used the money from his local lottery winnings to buy his freedom. Corruption also helped sour the public on lotteries: crooked operators could simply sell tickets and abscond with the proceeds without actually awarding prizes.
But despite the odds, lotteries remain hugely popular in the United States and across the world. Americans spent more than $100 billion on lottery tickets in 2021, making it the most popular form of gambling. It’s easy to see why, too: the prizes can be staggering and there are few financial risks involved.
In order to make money, the state must sell enough tickets that it will win more than it costs to operate the lottery. But that can be tricky. If the jackpot is too high, nobody will play, and if the odds are too low, ticket sales will decline. To balance these factors, the state must adjust the odds or increase or decrease the number of balls in the game.
Lottery advertisements generally focus on two messages primarily: that playing the lottery is fun and that a person’s chances of winning are slim. This is a savvy marketing strategy, because if a lottery feels like a fair game and the winner is not too far off from average, people are more likely to buy tickets.
But state officials shouldn’t hide behind the idea that lottery is a good thing. The revenue it generates is certainly significant, but how meaningful it is in broader state budgets and whether or not the trade-off to citizens losing money is worth the cost should be openly debated. Khristopher J. Brooks is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch. He covers housing, the business of sports and bankruptcy and previously worked for the Omaha World-Herald and Newsday. He has a BA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MS from Northwestern. His writing has been published in The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Florida Times-Union. He is a graduate of the Poynter Institute for Journalism in St. Petersburg, Fla.