A lottery is a gambling game whereby people pay a small amount of money for the chance to win a prize, usually a large sum of money. Each state enacts laws regulating the lottery and delegate to a lottery commission or board the responsibility of selecting and licensing retailers, training employees of those stores to use lottery terminals, selling and redeeming tickets, promoting lotteries, paying high-tier prizes, collecting winning tickets, paying taxes, and overseeing other administrative functions.
The most popular form of the lottery is a state-run game wherein players select numbers or symbols on tickets to enter a drawing for a prize. The first recorded lotteries were held in the Low Countries in the 15th century, when a number of towns held public lotteries to raise funds for town fortifications and to help the poor.
But even though the odds are long, many people play the lottery. Some buy tickets every week. Others spend more than a quarter of their incomes on tickets. They do so because they think it’s a good way to make money, and because of the psychological belief that winning the lottery will make them rich.
To convince people to play, state lotteries have tried to promote the message that winning the lottery is fun and, most importantly, that playing the lottery is a way of fulfilling one’s civic duty. But this messaging obscures the regressivity of the lottery and distracts from the fact that, for most people who play it, the prize money is far less than what they have invested.