Official lottery is a gambling game that dishes out prizes to paying participants, who pay for tickets and hope to win by matching the winning numbers. The prize can be anything from a unit in a subsidized housing block to kindergarten placements at a reputable public school. But, perhaps the most common, and most lucrative, form of official lottery involves cash, and the winnings can be quite substantial.

Lotteries are popular among the middle class, who see them as a way to supplement their incomes. For the poor, however, they represent a continuous exchange of money that they are mathematically stacked against. But critics argue that it is a scam that preys on the vulnerable and does little to boost state budgets.

Regardless, lotteries remain popular across the country and continue to attract millions of players. They have become a fixture in the American economy, and people spent upward of $100 billion on them in 2021. But the cost of these games should be carefully scrutinized.

When states first instituted their own lotteries in the mid-20th century, they viewed them as ways to raise revenue without raising taxes. They also believed that people were going to gamble anyway, so they might as well capture this “inevitable gambling.” But the evidence shows that state lotteries are far more expensive than other revenue streams and exacerbate problem gambling. They also impose significant social costs on those who play them, and they do not reduce illegal gambling.