Lottery
Lottery
In modern American culture, money is often equated with happiness. It is not surprising, then, that get-rich-quick schemes like the lottery attract millions of players looking for a big payoff. First seen in the United States in the 1800s, government lotteries were made illegal because they were so often "rigged," or designed to cheat those who bought tickets hoping to win money. In the mid-1960s, the lottery made a comeback when the states of New York and New Hampshire introduced lottery games to boost their income. Since that time state-run lotteries have grown in popularity and size. In the 1990s, thirty-eight states operated lotteries, paying out millions and earning billions of dollars each year. Huge multistate lotteries introduced in the 1990s brought potential jackpots in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Lottery critics question whether it is right to use legalized gambling to raise money for the government. Some say that the lottery unfairly burdens poor people, because the poor are far more likely than the rich to buy lottery tickets. Others point out that there is little real benefit to the state, because most of the money raised by the lottery goes to the companies that run the lottery, leaving only about one third to be used by the states. But lottery advocates argue that lotteries pour millions of dollars into state budgets, and that much of that money is used for education. As with other forms of vice, Americans seem likely to continue their love-hate relationship with lotteries.
—Tina Gianoulis
For More Information
"Are State Lotteries Stacked Against Blacks?" Ebony (June 1991): pp. 126–30.
Clotfelter, Charles T., and Phillip J. Cook. Selling Hope: State Lotteries in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Draper, Robert. "You Lose! The Sad Truth About the Texas Lottery." Texas Monthly (June 1993): pp. 118–35.
"Lottery History." NASPL (National Association of State and Provincial Lotteries).http://www.naspl.org/history.html (accessed March 21, 2002).
Weiss, Ann E. Lotteries: Who Wins, Who Loses? Hillside, NJ: Enslow, 1991.