A lottery is a procedure for distributing something (usually money or prizes) among a group of people by lot or chance. In its most common form, a lottery involves paying people to pay for chances in a drawing or series of drawings where the winners are chosen by chance or lot. A lottery may be a public or private enterprise. Examples include a lottery for apartments in a subsidized housing complex or kindergarten placements at a reputable school, but also a financial lottery that gives away large cash prizes to ticket holders. In the latter case, tickets are usually sold for a fixed price (typically $1) and the winnings are determined by matching a series of numbers or symbols to those drawn by machine or selected by chance.

The word lottery derives from the Latin loterie, meaning a drawing for prizes, and its roots go back to ancient times. The Old Testament, for example, instructs Moses to take a census of Israel and then distribute the land by lot; this was called a “conscription.” Roman emperors used lotteries to give away slaves and property during Saturnalian feasts. In the early American colonies, public lotteries were used to raise money for projects such as building bridges, repairing canals, and financing colleges, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and King’s College. Benjamin Franklin organized a lottery in 1776 to raise funds for cannons for the defense of Philadelphia.

Lotteries have become a popular source of state revenue, and their growth has often outpaced that of traditional forms of taxation. However, the rise of state lotteries has created a number of problems. Most important, they have made government at every level dependent on this new type of gambling, and the pressure to increase revenues has spawned a continuous stream of innovative new games.

The popularity of lotteries in the United States has grown to such a degree that it is now estimated that Americans spend more than $80 billion per year on them. The majority of this money is spent by middle-class individuals. However, the lottery is a remarkably unequal enterprise; for example, the poor play the games at disproportionately low rates and the wealthiest people spend more on them than anyone else.

Moreover, the development of lottery games has been a textbook example of how policy decisions are often made piecemeal and incrementally, with little overall overview or control. As a result, few, if any, states have a coherent gambling or lottery policy. This lack of policy oversight has also contributed to a lack of control over the activities that are financed by state lotteries. It has also exacerbated the alleged negative consequences of lottery games, such as targeting the poor, presenting problem gamblers with more addictive games, and promoting a false sense of wealth to young children. Lottery players also tend to be skewed by gender, race/ethnicity, age, and religion. This skewing of the playing population has raised concerns about social inequities and other ethical issues.