A lottery is a game in which people pay to have a chance of winning a prize. The prizes are often money, but can also be things like units in a subsidized housing block or kindergarten placements at a public school. People choose a group of numbers or have machines randomly select numbers for them, and those who match a given set of numbers win the jackpot. It’s a form of gambling, and there are rules that govern how much a player can spend and how many numbers they can choose.
Although making decisions and determining fates by lot has a long record (with multiple instances in the Bible), the lottery as a method of raising money is a relatively modern invention. The first public lotteries to award cash prizes appear in the Low Countries of the 15th century, when towns used them to raise funds for town fortifications and to help the poor.
Lotteries continue to be popular with both the general population and state governments, which use them as a way to collect “voluntary taxes” instead of imposing a direct tax on the populace. These taxes help fund a range of public usages, from education to medical care.
But despite the popular image of lotteries as a way for citizens to avoid direct taxation, they tend to be heavily skewed by income. Clotfelter and Cook report that the bulk of lottery players and revenue come from middle-income neighborhoods, while significantly fewer play in low-income ones.