The lottery is a form of gambling in which players pay for tickets and win prizes if their numbers match those randomly selected by machines. Most states and the District of Columbia have lotteries. People buy tickets to win a prize such as a car, cash, or an apartment. Some people also play lotteries to win college scholarships or medical treatments. Unlike most other forms of gambling, winning the lottery requires a combination of luck and strategy.
Making decisions and determining fates by the casting of lots has a long history, including a biblical command for Moses to take a census and distribute land; Roman emperors distributed property and slaves; and an early public lotteries distributed articles such as dinnerware during Saturnalian feasts. The modern state lottery traces its roots to the United States, where a Continental Congress voted in 1776 to establish a private lottery to raise money for American colleges, including Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, and King’s College (now Columbia).
Today, many Americans play the lottery at least occasionally, and about 50 percent of adults report buying tickets once a year. But the distribution of playing is a bit more uneven: The highest-volume lottery players are low-income and less educated, and they are disproportionately male and nonwhite. Those groups, combined with the large percentage of lottery revenue that is earmarked for education, have led to criticism that the lottery perpetuates inequality.