How the Lottery Affects Poor Communities

Lottery, the act of drawing lots for a prize, dates back to antiquity. Its use as a party game is attested to in the Bible, and it was used by Roman emperors as a way of giving away land and slaves. In the nineteenth century, it was a major source of revenue for American states, and it became a common way for African Americans to win money and get out of jail. But, as this article will show, lottery is not just a game. It’s also a system of hidden taxation that affects poor communities in profoundly harmful ways.

The earliest state-sponsored lotteries to offer tickets for a prize of cash were held in the Low Countries in the fifteenth century. In some towns, the money raised by lottery ticket sales was used for building town fortifications and to help the poor. In other towns, lottery proceeds were used to pay for wars.

Cohen argues that, by the nineteen sixties, growing awareness of the money to be made in lottery gambling collided with a crisis in state funding brought on by inflation and the cost of the Vietnam War. Especially in Northeastern states with larger social safety nets, politicians began to view lotteries as “budgetary miracles”—a chance for them to make revenue appear out of thin air without the political risk of raising taxes or cutting services, options that were extremely unpopular among voters.