Lottery is a method of awarding prizes, usually money, by drawing lots. The practice of making decisions and determining fates by lot dates back centuries, including examples in the Bible (the Lord instructing Moses to take a census of the people of Israel and distribute their land by lottery) and Roman emperors giving away property and slaves through raffles at Saturnalian feasts. Modern lotteries have become a common form of raising funds for state government, charity, and other purposes.
Lotteries are run as businesses, and their advertising necessarily focuses on persuading people to spend their money on them. As a result, they often attract criticism for the problems they cause, such as encouraging compulsive gambling and regressive impacts on lower-income households.
Despite such criticism, lotteries continue to have broad public support and are widely used. They are especially popular when they are perceived as benefiting a particular public good, such as education. Indeed, lotteries have been shown to win and retain broad public approval even when state governments are experiencing fiscal stress.
Lottery ads also receive much attention for their deceptive content, which frequently focuses on the probability of winning and inflates the value of money won (in many cases lotto jackpots are paid in equal annual installments over 20 years, with inflation dramatically eroding their current value). These types of claims have been found to be particularly misleading to lower-income consumers. Studies show that the majority of lotto players come from middle-income neighborhoods, while far fewer proportionally from low-income areas.