The Public Interest and the Lottery
The lottery is a form of gambling in which numbered tickets are sold for a chance to win prizes. In the United States, most states have lotteries that raise billions of dollars each year for state governments and charities. It is popular with many people, who believe that winning the lottery is a path to prosperity and the ultimate reward for hard work. However, the odds are stacked against anyone who plays the lottery and it is important to understand how the game works before making a decision to play.
The history of the lottery is one of the most fascinating stories in public policy. In the immediate post-World War II period, state governments expanded their array of social safety net programs and tapped the lottery to help pay for them without especially burdensome taxes on the working class and middle class. The lottery quickly became a major revenue source.
Almost every state in the country has now established a lottery and it appears that there is no end in sight for its growth. The popularity of the game is in part driven by a basic human desire to gamble and dream of becoming rich. Billboards announcing huge jackpots are designed to appeal to this primal impulse, but there is more going on here than just a craving for wealth. Lotteries also carry the implicit message that winning the lottery is a civic duty, an act of patriotism, or a way to support children and other worthy causes.
While the lottery has a long and varied history in Europe, the modern era of state-run lotteries began with New Hampshire’s launch in 1964. Since then, the adoption of a lottery by all but two states has followed a pattern that is strikingly similar: the state legislates a monopoly for itself; establishes a public corporation or agency to run the lottery (instead of licensing a private company in return for a cut of profits); begins operations with a limited number of relatively simple games; and then, under pressure from the desire for additional revenues, progressively expands the number and complexity of available games.
State lottery officials often find themselves at cross-purposes with the public interest. Criticism of the lottery focuses on specific issues such as its impact on compulsive gamblers and its regressive effect on lower-income groups. In general, though, these criticisms reflect the fact that lotteries are running at a great distance from a coherent overall public policy. The evolution of state lotteries is a classic example of the process by which the creation of a new public policy is often made piecemeal and incrementally, with the result that its future direction is hard to anticipate or predict. In the case of the lottery, this problem is particularly acute because of the state’s profound dependency on its revenues. This dependence, in turn, tends to reinforce a culture of short-term thinking and a lack of general oversight.