Lottery is a form of gambling where people purchase tickets for the chance to win a prize. Some governments outlaw it while others endorse it and organize a state or national lottery. Lotteries raise money for a variety of public purposes, including education, infrastructure projects, and social services. They are often promoted as a substitute for more onerous taxes. The popularization of the lottery coincided with growing anti-tax movements and a prevailing materialism that held that anyone could become rich with the right amount of effort or luck.

Lotteries typically start small with a modest number of relatively simple games and expand with the introduction of new games as revenues grow. Critics of the industry have focused on the marketing tactics used to promote the lottery—including misleading information about the odds of winning and inflating the value of money won (most lotto jackpots are paid in equal annual installments over 20 years, with inflation dramatically eroding the actual cash value). They also criticize the tendency for state lottery commissions to promote addiction to gambling and to disproportionately favor high-income players.

Lotteries have been a feature of American life for centuries, with early examples including the colonial-era Boston lottery to fund a road across the Blue Ridge Mountains and Benjamin Franklin’s 1776 lottery to raise funds for cannons for the defense of Philadelphia against the British. They have a long history in other countries, as well. Financial lotteries are the most common type, where participants pay a small sum for the chance to win a large amount.