Lottery is a competition based on chance, in which numbered tickets are sold and prizes given to the holders of numbers drawn at random. Often the lottery is used to raise money for public or charitable purposes.
Although the casting of lots for decisions and fates has a long history in human society (including several instances in the Bible), public lotteries are relatively recent in development. The first recorded ones took place in the Low Countries in the 15th century, with the purpose of raising funds to build town fortifications and help the poor. In colonial America, they were a significant source of public funding for roads, canals, churches, schools, and other ventures.
State governments adopted lotteries in the immediate post-World War II period, as a way to expand social programs without increasing taxes. This era of low taxation was also one of the heydays of deregulation, and the growth of lotteries in the states was closely tied to this phenomenon.
The main arguments in favor of the lottery are that it can fund needed public services with a very small portion of the total state budget, and that voters will be willing to spend their money for this purpose. Critics, however, argue that the “earmarking” of lottery funds for a specific program, such as public education, does not actually increase overall spending on the program; it only allows the legislature to reduce the appropriations that would otherwise be allotted from the general fund. In addition, they point out that the very poor, in the bottom quintile, do not have enough discretionary income to spend on lottery tickets.