Lottery is the practice of distributing prizes through random selection. Historically, lotteries have been used as painless forms of taxation and to raise funds for a variety of public purposes. Lotteries are a common form of gambling, and people spend billions of dollars annually on them. State governments promote the games as a way to raise revenue without raising taxes, but there are concerns about their social costs and whether they are truly painless to the state.

The concept of distributing property or goods through lottery is ancient, going back centuries to Moses’ instructions to the Israelites to divide land by lot and Roman emperors’ use of the technique to give away slaves. In colonial America, lotteries played a key role in financing private and public projects, including roads, libraries, canals, churches, colleges, and even a battery of guns to defend Philadelphia against the British during the Revolutionary War.

Currently, nearly every state has a lottery. Most follow a similar pattern: a legislature passes a law establishing the lottery; establishes a state agency or public corporation to run the lottery (as opposed to licensing a private company in exchange for a percentage of profits); begins operations with a modest number of relatively simple games; and, due to pressure for additional revenues, progressively expands the portfolio of available games, particularly through advertising. The result is that compulsive gamblers are drawn to the game, and the growth of the industry has spawned numerous criticisms, both of its effect on lower-income people and its overall cost.