Lotteries are games in which the winners are determined by drawing lots. Prizes are often money, goods or services. The drawing of lots is mentioned in many ancient documents, including the Bible, and it became a popular practice in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for raising money for towns, wars, colleges and public-works projects. The lottery first came to the United States in 1612. King James I of England created a lottery to raise funds for his colony in Jamestown, Virginia. State governments soon followed suit, creating their own lotteries to raise money for schools, roads and other infrastructure projects.

The modern-day lottery is a massive industry. In the United States alone, people purchase billions of dollars worth of tickets every week, and a small percentage actually win the big jackpots. The biggest prize was $365 million in Powerball in 2016. The odds of winning are slim, but the lottery is still popular because it appeals to a human desire to gamble and have fun.

But the glitzy television commercials and billboards promoting lottery play are not telling the full story. For one, the money raised by lotteries is hardly distributed evenly throughout the country. Rather, the majority of players and the vast majority of lottery revenues are drawn from middle-income neighborhoods. The poor participate at disproportionately lower rates, but this is a result of societal factors such as poverty and limited mobility. Lottery advertisements also tend to present misleading information about the odds of winning, inflating jackpot amounts and the value of money won (in most cases, lottery prizes are paid out in installments over 20 years, with taxes and inflation dramatically eroding the current value). These misrepresentations can obscure the regressivity of the lottery.