In America, people spend billions on lottery tickets each year. They do so for a variety of reasons. Some play purely for the chance of winning big. Others believe that winning the lottery will help them lead a better life. The odds of hitting the jackpot are incredibly low, but people still play because they believe that they can win. I’ve talked to many lottery players, including those who have played for years, spending $50 or $100 a week. These folks defy all the assumptions that you might make going into a conversation about why they play. You might think, “These are irrational people who have been duped into thinking that they can get rich off of their hard work,” or, even worse, you might assume that they don’t know the odds are bad and they think they’re smarter than everyone else because they play lottery games.
Lotteries are competitions in which numbered tickets are sold and the winners are chosen by random drawing. They have many variations, but all have a few things in common. They have some way of recording the identities and amounts staked by each bettor, and they have a method of pooling the money so that it can be awarded to the winner.
They also have a set of rules determining the frequency and size of prizes. A percentage of the total prize pool is typically taken as costs and profits for the lottery organizers, so that only a small portion remains for winners. Lotteries also have to decide whether to offer a few large prizes or lots of smaller ones. They also have to figure out how much of the prize pool should be allocated to each category of bettors, as well as whether to allow a rollover drawing, which increases ticket sales but adds to the cost of the operation.
The first state-run lotteries opened in the mid-twentieth century, a time when America was defined politically by its aversion to taxation. The era was also one in which a growing number of Americans lost their financial security, as income inequality widened, job security diminished, health-care costs rose, and the long-standing national promise that education and hard work would render them financially secure disappeared for most working families.
Cohen’s book, which draws on dozens of in-depth interviews with lottery players, explores the psychological, social, and ethical issues raised by this wildly popular form of gambling. He finds that lottery playing is a deeply irrational behavior, but it’s also often an emotionally rewarding one for its devotees. It’s a phenomenon that will not go away.
As the lottery’s popularity has grown, advocates of its legalization have shifted strategy. Instead of arguing that it can float a state’s entire budget, they have begun to claim that it can cover a single line item, almost always some kind of government service—education, elder care, public parks. That makes it easier to sell the lottery as a way of raising revenue without cutting vital services.