Lottery is a form of gambling that takes place in the public arena, with prizes that are decided by the drawing of numbers or other symbols. The prize money may be a lump sum or a series of payments. Lotteries are most common in state governments, but they also exist as private enterprises and even in religious communities.
The word is derived from the Dutch noun lot (“fate”) and its verbal counterpart, “loterij,” meaning “action of drawing lots.” The term was first used in English in the 1670s. It was a common way for European cities to finance civic works and raise funds for charitable causes in the early seventeenth century. At the outset of the American Revolution, lottery profits supported the Continental Army. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton both endorsed them, with Hamilton grasping that people would willingly hazard a trifling amount for the chance of considerable gain, and that “everybody will prefer a small chance of winning a great deal to a very large chance of winning little.”
A second element required of a lottery is a system for collecting and pooling all stakes placed on tickets. This is usually done by a network of agents who buy tickets and pass their payments up the chain to the organizer. From this a percentage is deducted for costs and profit and the rest is available for prizes. Prizes vary widely, from a single ticket to a whole town, but a minimum of a thousand dollars is usually offered for each drawing. Many countries require that a portion of the prize pool be set aside for administrative expenses and to promote the lottery.
Ticket sales increase when the jackpot is high, and the size of the jackpot is sometimes advertised on newscasts and websites to generate publicity. The size of the prize pool is often determined by the state or sponsor, which must balance its interest in attracting participants with its desire to maximize revenue.
In some societies, super-sized prizes can have the effect of legitimizing gambling and even aspire to become a kind of national sport. Such promotions tend to be especially attractive to lower-income individuals, whose gambling habits are not well understood. In America, for example, most Americans consider professional sports wagering morally acceptable, but only one in six reports engaging in lottery gambling.
The wealthy are not above playing the lottery, but they buy fewer tickets than the poor. Rich people spend on average a tenth of their income on tickets; poor people spend thirteen percent. The result is that the lottery is, as Cohen notes, a “tax on the poor.” This is the kind of thing that social psychologists study, and they are quick to point out that every group develops its own outcast or misfit, who gets blamed for all sorts of group malfunctions and woes. The same phenomenon can be observed in the workplace, where such individuals are called on to fill a variety of roles.