The lottery is a form of gambling where you win by picking the correct numbers in a draw. It’s a common way for states to raise revenue and is also used by sports teams, churches, and charities. Most state governments run lotteries, and people spend billions of dollars playing them each year. It’s a popular pastime that stretches back to the Low Countries in the 15th century, where town records show public lotteries raising funds for everything from town fortifications to helping the poor.

While a large proportion of the money goes to winners, there’s also a big chunk that gets paid out as commissions to retailers and administrators (such as a state government). And then there are expenses like advertising and salaries for lottery officials. It’s a classic example of policy being made piecemeal and incrementally, with the general public welfare only taken into account intermittently.

In the immediate post-World War II era, lotteries were promoted as a way for state governments to expand their array of services without raising taxes too much on their already-burdened middle and working classes. The popularity of lotteries grew rapidly at this time, partly because of widening economic inequality and newfound materialism that asserted that anyone could become rich with enough effort or luck. Interestingly, research has found that the objective fiscal conditions of a state don’t appear to have much bearing on whether it adopts a lottery. Instead, a state lottery’s popularity seems to be largely determined by how much the public believes that a lottery will help fund particular public goods such as education.