The lottery is the name of any contest that depends primarily on chance for selection of winners, even if skill or other considerations play a role in later phases. The basic elements of a lottery are a prize, a pool of money collected from participants as stakes, and some way to record and communicate those bets. A lottery can be as simple as a state-sponsored game with large prizes and limited number of winners, or it can include multistage competitions with smaller prizes. A percentage of the pool normally goes as costs and profits to lottery organizers, and some may also go toward promoting and organizing the event.
While lotteries may be a boon to states whose coffers swell thanks to ticket sales and winners, the odds of winning are low for most people who buy tickets. In addition, as Vox points out, research suggests that lottery plays are disproportionately concentrated in poor neighborhoods and among lower-income and minority residents. The same studies suggest that lottery playing decreases with age, and the odds of winning become much less attractive with higher levels of education.
Today, 44 states and the District of Columbia have lotteries. The six that don’t are Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Utah and Nevada, a curious choice, given the ubiquity of gambling in those locales. New Hampshire began the modern era of state lotteries in 1964, and virtually all have followed suit. Their arguments for and against adoption, the structure of their resulting lotteries, and the evolution of those lotteries’ operations have been remarkably similar.