A lottery is a competition in which numbered tickets are sold and a drawing held for prizes. It is a popular source of painless revenue for state governments, and its appeal is especially strong when the prospect of tax increases or cuts in public programs looms large. A key argument made by advocates of lotteries is that they capture an inexorable human impulse to gamble: “You never know,” they say, “you might win a big jackpot.” But this one-in-a-million chance has its limits, and it is undermined when the odds are constantly inflated by the huge payouts on display in billboards along highways.

Moreover, critics charge that the earmarking of lottery funds for a particular program reduces the appropriations to that cause from the general fund, and the money saved ends up going to other purposes anyway. Consequently, the supposedly “painless” revenues of the lottery end up being a tiny drop in the bucket for state government coffers.

Although these critiques have some validity, they have rarely prevented states from adopting lotteries. Cohen argues that the development of the modern lottery began in the nineteen-sixties, when growing awareness of all the money to be made in gambling collided with a crisis in state funding. Under the pressure of population growth, inflation, and the cost of the Vietnam War, balancing the budget became increasingly difficult for many states without increasing taxes or cutting public services—both of which are extremely unpopular with voters.