The lottery is one of America’s favorite pastimes, with Americans spending more than $80 billion each year on tickets. Yet there are concerns about the lottery’s effect on poor people and problem gamblers, and about whether it serves the public interest.

Until recently, state lotteries were little more than traditional raffles, wherein the public purchased tickets for a drawing at some time in the future. Then in the 1970s, innovations like scratch-off tickets dramatically changed the lottery industry. These tickets offered smaller prizes, but higher odds of winning (as much as 1 in 4). And they required less commitment: the purchaser need not wait weeks or months for a drawing to be held.

The popularity of lottery games has soared with growing income inequality and a popular materialism that asserts anyone can become rich through effort or luck. Lottery revenues have also been a reliable source of painless revenue for state governments, even in times of financial stress. Nonetheless, there are a number of underlying factors that explain this phenomenon.

Among them, the most significant may be the degree to which the proceeds are perceived as benefiting a particular public good such as education. A second is the extent to which lottery play correlates with other socio-economic variables such as gender, race, and age. Finally, the degree to which a lottery is perceived as an alternative to higher taxes plays a role as well. But these variables do not fully account for the persistence of lottery popularity.