We’ve all dreamed of winning the lottery. We’ve seen billboards announcing the massive jackpots that could change our lives forever. But a lot more goes on behind the scenes, including the fact that it is an addictive form of gambling that can be quite costly. And even those who do win often find themselves worse off than before.
The word lottery combines Middle Dutch loterie with Old English lotterie and Latin litera, meaning “a chance allotment” or “a distribution by lot.” The earliest state-sponsored lotteries in Europe were drawn by chance and were used as a way to raise money for various public purposes. The Continental Congress established a lottery to raise funds for the Revolutionary War, and Alexander Hamilton believed that lotteries were the only way that “the poor man could hazard a trifling sum for a great gain.”
A lottery is any game in which people pay for a chance to win a prize based on a random selection process. The prize can be anything from cash to goods. In the United States, federal statutes define a lottery as a “game of chance or skill in which a person has a reasonable expectation of winning a prize based on the payment of a consideration.” This includes scratch-off tickets and other games in which numbers are drawn and winners are announced. There are also privately organized lotteries, such as those in which property is given away for a chance to participate in military conscription or commercial promotions.