As many as 44 states and the District of Columbia run lotteries, which are state-sponsored games that award prizes based on chance. They have a long history in the United States, and they’ve helped finance everything from building roads to launching private colonies like the Virginia Company. But the lottery industry’s growth has raised some troubling questions about how well it’s regulated and the social costs of its success.
What’s more, the people who play the lottery — and the money they spend on tickets, which often account for a large share of their incomes — can be hard to reach with the message that it’s not really gambling. “Lottery commissions want to make it a game, which obscures its regressivity and the fact that it’s not a game for everyone,” says an anti-state-sponsored gambling activist.
The idea that the odds of winning are great, and that a little bit of money can change your life, is appealing to people who don’t see much hope in their jobs or in the economy. They see lottery playing as a kind of social safety net that allows them to get a few minutes, hours or days to dream about what their lives could be like.
Some states’ lotteries are regulated better than others, and statisticians have mapped out some that have higher rates of return for players. But most lottery winners don’t know what their chances are, and even if they did, it would be difficult for them to figure out whether their numbers were random. One common strategy is to pick numbers that are either significant dates (like birthdays) or sequences that hundreds of other players have picked, like 1-2-3-4-5-6.