The lottery is a form of gambling in which numbers are drawn at random for a prize. While some governments outlaw it, most endorse it and regulate it in some way. In fact, 44 states and the District of Columbia run lotteries. And while most people don’t win, some do. The lottery is a big business that contributes billions of dollars to the economy each year. But how does it work? And what are the odds of winning?
The answer, Cohen explains, depends on how one plays. Those who play in a pool, for example, have the advantage of buying many tickets at a lower price than they would otherwise. Buying tickets in bulk is also a good strategy, as it increases your chances of picking a winning number. But the most important factor is timing. You want to buy tickets before the drawing and avoid purchasing them after it.
Most lottery players don’t buy their tickets in bulk, and most don’t know that doing so dramatically reduces their odds of winning. Buying them in bulk, for instance, makes it more likely that your numbers will be in the low range, while buying them after the draw makes them more likely to be in the high range. By combining these factors, you can increase your odds of winning by up to 50%.
In the seventeenth century, England’s lottery helped finance the European colonization of America, despite strict Protestant prohibitions against gambling. And while it was outlawed in some colonies, such as Massachusetts Bay Colony, where it was first authorized in 1745, the lottery quickly spread across America after statehood.
But the modern incarnation of lottery emerged in the nineteen-sixties, as states frantically searched for budget solutions that would not anger their increasingly tax averse voters. With a swelling population and rising inflation, balancing state coffers became more difficult than ever; if the government wanted to keep spending in line, it needed to either raise taxes or cut services—both unpopular options with voters.
The lottery seemed like a perfect solution. It could raise lots of money, while allowing state governments to pocket the profits, and it offered the potential for large jackpots that would appeal to the wealthy. This combination of factors, paired with long-standing ethical objections to gambling, gave lottery proponents the moral cover they needed to push it through state legislatures. And so it began: New Hampshire approved the nation’s first state-run lottery in 1964, and more than a dozen other states followed suit within a few years. The rest of the country soon joined in, as state revenues plummeted and the national anti-tax revolt gathered momentum. By the late seventies, California had passed Proposition 13, and property taxes dropped by nearly sixty per cent. The federal funds that previously flowed into state coffers declined as well.