Lottery is a scheme for the distribution of prizes, especially cash, based on chance. It is often sponsored by states for public charitable purposes, and the winners are selected by drawing lots. There are also private lotteries. The chances of winning are very slim, and people have been known to suffer depression as a result. Some people have even ended up worse off than they were before.

The idea behind state-sponsored lotteries is that if you can get enough people to buy tickets, you can generate the kind of revenue necessary to run a large state government and pay for things like education. This arrangement worked fine in the immediate post-World War II period, when states could expand their social safety nets without imposing especially onerous taxes on middle-class and working-class families.

But as the economy slows and state budgets shrink, that model is starting to break down. To keep ticket sales up, states have to pay out a significant percentage of the total revenues in prize money. That reduces the amount of money that’s available for other things, including education. And consumers aren’t always clear about how much of a tax they’re paying when they purchase lottery tickets.

I’ve talked to a number of lottery players, people who have been buying tickets for years, spending $50 or $100 a week on them. What surprises you is that, despite their knowledge of the odds, they still feel that there’s a small sliver of hope that they will win, and that this is really their only way out of their current situation.