A lottery is a game in which a number or symbols are drawn to determine the winner of a prize. It is also a method of raising funds for public or private projects, such as building the British Museum or repairing bridges. Lotteries are common around the world and have a long history in Europe, with the first state-sponsored ones appearing in 15th-century Burgundy and Flanders as a way of bringing in money to fortify towns’ defenses or to aid the poor.
In the United States, where lotteries are legal, about 50 percent of people play them at least once a year. But those numbers mask a deeper reality: Most of the money is made by a small group of players who are disproportionately lower-income, less educated, nonwhite, and male. These are the “lottery winners,” and they can make a fortune by buying large numbers of tickets in the big drawings.
For these lottery winners, money isn’t just an extravagance—it’s a ticket to a new life. But as the book shows, that promise of instant riches is often hard to keep. In fact, the majority of lottery winners lose much or all of their winnings shortly after their windfalls. This is because the rich are different from the rest of us, and they often don’t understand how to handle their wealth.
Cohen’s story starts with an inextricable human impulse to gamble. But it really gets underway in the nineteen-sixties, when growing awareness of how much money there is to be won in the lottery coincided with a crisis in state funding. The growing population, rising inflation, and costs from the Vietnam War were straining many states’ budgets, and balancing them without raising taxes or cutting services was impossible.
Lotteries, which were popular in the Roman Empire (Nero was a fan), are an ancient practice. They were often used as a form of entertainment at dinner parties or during Saturnalian feasts, or to give away property and slaves. They are even mentioned in the Bible.
The modern lottery was born of these traditions, but with a twist. It became a way for states to raise cash for their general coffers without triggering an outrage among voters who saw it as a hidden tax. When advocates of the lottery began arguing that it would only fund a specific line item—usually education, but sometimes elder care or public parks—they could make the case that a vote for the lottery was not a vote to support gambling but for a vital service. This strategy has proven successful.