The Economic Inequalities of State Lotteries

Martin Tomlinson

Lotteries, games of chance in which some sort of token is

bought in the hopes that it will result in a big payoff, have been around
since the time of the Great Wall of China. The wall itself is an early
example of a public works project funded by a crude lottery (Delcour
2001). Lotteries flourished across Europe and other parts of the world,
eventually making their way across the Atlantic Ocean to America,
where they have enjoyed sporadic popularity. In the past forty years,
though, state lotteries have proliferated greatly in the U.S. and are now
found in 38 states. Lotteries were abandoned by states after scandal
rocked the Louisiana Lottery program in the late 19th century, but
were revived by New Hampshire in 1964 (National Coalition Against
Legalized Gambling, 2003). Lotteries are extremely attractive to
legislators because they provide a way for them to raise hundreds of
millions of dollars in revenue without raising ordinary taxes. Net
proceeds from state lotteries are typically earmarked for specific
programs such as care for the elderly or education. Lottery proponents
claim that because of this, state lotteries actually combat inequality
by helping the less affluent residents of a state meet basic needs or
take advantage of opportunities they would not ordinarily have.
However, these claims must be critically examined. Who buys lottery
tickets? How much of the proceeds are actually getting to their specified
programs? Is lottery money actually increasing funding of targeted
programs? Who is benefiting from the lottery money? Finally, what
impact do state lotteries have on existing inequalities?

History of State Lotteries

Lotteries originated in America starting in the colonial days.

Chrestomathy: Annual Review of Undergraduate Research at the College of Charleston

Volume 2, 2003: pp. 266-283
© 2003 by the College of Charleston, Charleston SC 29424, USA.
All rights to be retained by the author.
 Tomlinson: Economic Inequalities of State Lotteries 267
Lotteries had long been popular in England, so colonists brought the
concept across the Atlantic with them. Early colonial lotteries were
used to fund many venerable American institutions such as Harvard
and Yale Universities. Lotteries continued to flourish in the period
after independence, but were essentially wiped out in the 1830s. The
Era of Jacksonian Democracy brought corruption and inefficiency to
state lotteries and many other agencies, and lotteries disappeared due
to scandal. State lotteries reappeared in the late 19th century, but
were done away with in the 1890’s when the Louisiana Lottery Scandal
broke. In addition to being a den of bribery, embezzlement, and
corruption, the Louisiana Lottery Commission was transporting lottery
tickets across state lines and selling them across the nation. This
outraged the nation, and this practice was outlawed, and state lotteries
again became taboo.
In 1964, however, New Hampshire passed a state lottery
measure, making it the only state in the United States to do so. It did
so because it had no income or sales tax, and a “voluntary tax” like the
lottery was much more palatable to the state’s voters. Twelve more
states followed in the 1960’s and 1970’s. State lotteries underwent a
particularly explosive boom period in the 1980s, when President Ronald
Reagan’s tax cuts left state lawmakers frantically searching for new
sources of revenue. Eighteen more states passed lottery measures
during the decade. The total of states with lotteries was now thirty-
one, and this increase put a great deal of pressure on states without
lotteries, as residents of their states would frequently go across state
lines to buy tickets to another state’s lottery, meaning cash was being
sucked out non-lottery states. As former Kansas governor John Carlin
put it, “Not having one when your neighbor has one is like tying one
hand behind your back (Nelson 2001).” This competitive disadvantage
has largely helped seven more states pass lottery measures, including
South Carolina most recently. Thirty-eight states, plus Washington,
D.C., now have lotteries as a means of increasing funding. Several
other states like Tennessee and Oklahoma are currently investigating
the possibility of instituting a state lottery.

Problems with the Lottery

On the surface, lotteries appear to be a perfect solution to the
268 Chrestomathy: Volume 2, 2003
governmental quandary of how to raise revenue without raising taxes.
A lottery allows people to buy tickets that will simultaneously allow
them to play a fun game of chance and donate money for a good
cause. For this reason, the lottery is often referred to as a “voluntary
tax” or “invisible tax.” However, all is not as it appears. Lotteries are
often marketed on the platform that they will reduce inequality within
a state, but in fact, the opposite is often true. States often trumpet
that lottery revenues will go towards programs like pre-kindergarten
programs for the poor and college scholarships for students who could
not otherwise afford higher education. Lottery proponents often point
to statistics that show that lottery play is usually very similar across
income ranges, with lower middle-class respondents usually playing
slightly more than those from other income groups. However, what
they do not explore is the frequency of play and the types of games
played. When these statistics are examined, one discovers that
disadvantaged groups such as the poor and minorities are much more
likely to be very active lottery players. This means that members of
these groups bear an inordinate share of the burden of the “voluntary
tax.”
Clotfelter and Cook (1989), policy experts on the subject of
state lotteries, have done research showing that the top five percent
of players in a state (in terms of tickets bought) are responsible for an
average of 54 percent of overall lottery revenue. Another study found
that if every lottery player spent the median amount of dollars per
year on lottery tickets, lottery revenues would decline by over 75
percent. This contradicts lottery proponents’ claim that state lotteries
are harmless programs in which people donate money to state programs
one dollar at a time. Especially when one considers the percentage of
one’s annual income spent on state lotteries, the inescapable conclusion
is that lotteries function as a highly regressive tax, impacting the are
harmless programs in which people donate money to state programs
one dollar at a time. Especially when one considers the percentage of
one’s annual income spent on state lotteries, the inescapable conclusion
is that lotteries function as a highly regressive tax, impacting the
disadvantaged far more than the privileged. Figure 1, a 1991 study by
the Detroit Metropolitan Area Public Policy Survey certainly seems to
corroborate this theory
 Tomlinson: Economic Inequalities of State Lotteries 269
Figure 1
Lottery Participation by Social Characteristics

Income % Players Annual Exp. In $ As % of Income

<$10,000 70.7 139 1.51
$10,000-$19,999 73.1 168 0.84
$20,000-$49,999 78.0 144 0.42
$50,000-$69,999 83.3 127 0.24
>$70,000 80.4 139 0.18

Education % Players Annual Exp. In $ As % of Income

<HS Degree 70.1 225 1.28
HS Degree 78.1 154 0.60
Some post-HS 78.7 153 0.53
College Degree 74.3 93 0.25

Race % Players Annual Exp. In $ As % of Income

Black 69.3 192 0.96
Non-Black 79.5 119 0.36

Sex % Players Annual Exp. In $ As % of Income

Female 80.8 123 0.52
Male 73.3 162 0.53

Age % Players Annual Exp. In $ As % of Income

18-29 72.4 130 0.44
30-55 79.1 138 0.46
>55 71.1 153 0.80

Source: 1991 Detroit Metropolitan Area Public Policy Survey

As seen in the second column, it was found that players who earned
less than $10,000 a year and players who earned more than $70,000 a
year spent, on average, the exact same sum of money ($139) playing
the lottery. Data like this has been used by many lottery proponents
to “prove” that the rich and the poor contribute equally to the lottery.
However, there is a huge disparity between the percentage of their
270 Chrestomathy: Volume 2, 2003
income being spent. The players earning less than $10,000 spent an
average of 1.51% of their annual income playing the lottery, while
players earning more than $70,000 spent an average of .18% (Detroit
Metropolitan Area Survey 1991). This means that as a proportion of
income, the very poor in this survey were spending over eight times as
much money on the lottery as the very wealthy. This seems to suggest
strongly that lotteries are doing more to propagate social inequality
than they are to alleviate it. The problem is further exacerbated because
much of the net proceeds go to college scholarship programs which
primarily benefit the rich and middle class. Thus, in many ways lotteries
function as a sort of reversal of folk hero Robin Hood’s motto: they
take from the poor and give to the rich.
Another problem with state lotteries is the problem of
diminishing returns. It has been conclusively shown that while lottery
revenues initially boom, after several years overall revenues plateau.
This causes a major problem for most states, which have earmarked
lottery revenues for specific programs such as senior citizen care or
education. These programs will continue a rapid pace of growth and
will always demand more and more funding as time goes on. So what
happens when the programs the lottery was set up to fund need more
money than the lottery can provide? This is a problem that many
states have had to deal with. The usual response is to try to boost
lottery revenues through either the creation of new games or an
increase in lottery marketing, oftentimes both in conjunction. This
seems to be very questionable ethically. The duty of a state government
is to protect the welfare of its people, which it seems to be violating
by trying to convince them to spend their money on gambling. A good
example of this is Ohio, where officials time state lottery commercials
and newspaper advertisements to coincide with the distribution of
state payroll, welfare, and social security checks. States that experience
revenue declines also often turn to other forms of legalized gambling
such as video poker and keno machines.
Lottery commercials are also not subject to the same Federal
Trade Commission truth in advertising regulations as standard
commercial advertisements, and states use this to their advantage.
They market the lottery as a way to get rich and change your life without
having to work. The states do this without being honest about the
 Tomlinson: Economic Inequalities of State Lotteries 271
virtual impossibility of actually winning a big prize. One such
commercial in Connecticut featured a winner of a grand prize saying,
“When I was younger I could have planned my future. But I didn’t.
Or I could have made some smart investments. But I didn’t. Heck, I
could have bought a one-dollar Connecticut lotto ticket, won a jackpot
worth millions, and gotten a nice big check every year for 20 years.
And I did! I won!” The commercial ended with a voice-over saying,
“Odds of winning are 1 in 30 (Nelson 2001).” This gives viewers the
distinct impression that they have a 1 in 30 chance of winning a prize
that may change their life, when in fact the 1 in 30 consists mainly of
small prizes of only a few dollars. Governments which rely on lottery
revenues also necessarily rely on lottery players’ ignorance of the true
odds of winning a large prize in the games. If playing a pick 6 game
with 42 numbers (common among many states), a player has an
approximately 1 in 5 million chance of getting all six numbers correct
(NCALG 2003). If the game is increased to 49 numbers, as in
California, the chances decrease to 1 in 14 million (NCALG 2003).
You have a much better chance of being dealt a royal flush or being
killed abroad by a terrorist than winning even the simplest lottery
(Walsh). If you bought 100 tickets every week from the time you
were 18 until you were 75, you would have a 1% chance of ever
winning the lottery (and you would be spending nearly $300,000) (Walsh
1996). Even as gambling goes, the lottery is a bad bet. Typically
around 50% of gross lottery revenues are spent on payouts, which
means you can expect to get back 50 cents on every dollar you spend
on lottery tickets. On long odds super lottery games the odds fall
even lower, in some cases as low as 5%. On the other hand, an
informed player can expect to get back about 98 cents on the dollar in
casino games like blackjack, baccarat, slot machines, and craps (Walsh
1996). You can get back 95 cents on the dollar by playing roulette or
betting on football games (Walsh 1996).
Another criticism of state lotteries is that they are a highly
inefficient way to raise money for programs. Lottery revenues are
typically a very small percent of a state’s total revenues. Overall, for
every dollar in total lottery revenue, typically between 30 and 40 cents
are actually spent on the programs they are earmarked for (Tanner
2002). The other 60 to 70 cents go towards payouts and running the
272 Chrestomathy: Volume 2, 2003
lottery commission. Lottery critics point out that in almost every case
the same revenues could be achieved by substantially less than a 1%
sales tax increase (Averill 2002). State lotteries have also been linked
to other social ills. Many critics have said that lotteries lead to an
overall increase in gambling, especially gambling among minors. Grun
and McKeigue (2000) studied gambling rates across income brackets
before and after the United Kingdom instituted the British National
Lottery in 1995. Figure 2 displays their data, which shows that the
National Lottery brought increases in gambling expenses across the
board, and huge jumps in the percentage of income spent on non-
lottery gambling among the poor and working classes.

Can Grun and McKeigue’s findings be applied to America?

While it is true that gambling is legal in Great Britain, it is essentially
decriminalized in most of the United States, so it seems perfectly
reasonable to assume that lotteries increase gambling in America.
Statistics also seem to show that crime does increase slightly in states
which adopt lotteries. While these theories have not been conclusively
proven, they do offer additional possibilities on the dangers of state
lotteries.
It has also been the experience of many states, most famously
Florida, that as soon as lottery money begins to actually get to the
 Tomlinson: Economic Inequalities of State Lotteries 273
specified programs, the state legislature cuts funding for those programs
and sends it elsewhere (Tanner 2002). It is for this reason that Robyn
Gearey (1997) refers to lotteries as “a shell game.” On average lottery
states spend about 50% of their total state budgets on education,
while non-lottery states spend an average of 60% (Bobilin 2003). This
seems to clearly demonstrate that once lotteries start to fund schools,
states spend less of their budgets on education and instead spend
money on other programs. The actual revenue produced by the lottery,
then, is not actually increasing education funding at all, but serving
whatever programs the legislature is most eager to fund. In Florida,
the legislature cut education funding so severely that many counties
were forced to use lottery revenue to pay teacher salaries, a purpose
for which it was never intended (Bobilin 2003). After education
lotteries are instituted, citizens are much more reluctant to support
additional education funding, because the lottery fosters the idea that
schools are swimming in money, when in fact their budgets are usually
decreased.

The Georgia Model

In 1993, Georgia passed a unique state lottery. The main
premise of their idea, propagated by Governor Zell Miller, was that
all net lottery proceeds be pushed into three educational programs.
The first of these is a free pre-kindergarten program for every four
year-old whose parents want them to participate. The second
component is a directive that provides for advanced technology in all
public school classrooms. The third and most celebrated of the Georgia
lottery programs is the HOPE scholarship program. These scholarships
provide full tuition, fees, and books at any public university or
technical school in the state for any student who graduates from a
state high school with a 3.0 or higher grade point average. The only
catch is that to keep the scholarship, the student must maintain at
least a 3.0 grade point average in college. These scholarships have
two main purposes. The first is to give underprivileged students the
opportunity to pursue higher education that they would not normally
have. The second is that it serves to combat the “brain drain,” a term
that refers to the tendency of the best students to leave a state for
elite private schools in other parts of the country. Georgia officials
274 Chrestomathy: Volume 2, 2003
reasoned that if these high-achieving students were given the option
of a free education at an in-state school, more of them could be
persuaded to stay in the state for college and beyond.
The Georgia model has been widely trumpeted as the ultimate
in lottery achievement. According to the Georgia Student Finance
Commission, the HOPE scholarship program has awarded scholarships
totaling 1.5 billion dollars to more than 600,000 students who met
qualifications. In 1992, before the HOPE program was implemented,
approximately 25 percent of Georgia students who scored over 1500
on the SAT stayed in state (Averill, 2002). Now the number is
estimated at 75 percent (Averill, 2002). The Georgia Office of School
Readiness also hails the pre-kindergarten program as a success, as it
provides free early childhood education to 62, 500 children annually.
The success of the Georgia Lottery has sprouted several imitators,
including South Carolina, which recently instituted its own education
lottery. Twelve other states have used lottery funds to fund a facsimile
to the HOPE scholarship program (NCALG, 2003). Oklahoma and
Tennessee, two states currently exploring the option of instituting a
lottery, are both looking into a Georgia-style education lottery.
But how well does the Georgia lottery really work? It seems
to be beyond argument that it effectively combats the “brain drain,”
keeping the best students in-state, which increases the likelihood they
will stay in-state after graduation and benefit the state economy. But
how effective is the Georgia lottery in fighting inequality? Some of its
critics argue that it is not effective at all, that the poor and minorities
buy a disproportionate share of lottery tickets, and the proceeds from
lottery sales go to the rich and middle class. One study found that
44% of Georgia high school students in 1994 were intentionally diluting
their academic classes with less challenging non-academic classes to
maintain a 3.0 grade point average (Bobilin 2003). The same study
followed the students through college and found that of the students
who were awarded the HOPE scholarship, 80% of them lost it before
they graduated from college (Bobilin 2003). Furthermore, Georgia’s
high school graduation rate fell from 64% in 1990 (before the lottery)
to 58% in 1996 (after the lottery) (NCALG, 2003). The population
constituting the six percent difference was most likely made up primarily
of borderline students from lower class backgrounds.
 Tomlinson: Economic Inequalities of State Lotteries 275
In the fall of 2000, two public policy researchers at the
University of Georgia, McCrary and Pavlak (2002), undertook an
extensive telephone survey to more exactly determine the economic
impacts of the Georgia State Lottery. Their findings seem to clearly
demonstrate that the Georgia lottery has the impact of helping the
privileged with the money of the poor. They found that whether or
not a person played the lottery was not strongly correlated with either
race or income (McCrary and Pavlak 2002, 1). However, as Figure 3
shows, they found that blacks, males, and the less educated were much
more likely to be “active” players, which they defined as individuals
spending more than $10 a week on lottery games (McCrary and Pavlak
2002, 18).

It would seem that the poor are also much more likely to be
active players, since lack of education and poverty are so strongly
correlated. Furthermore, as Figure 4 shows, McCrary and Pavlak also
found that blacks are much more likely to play “instant games” where
drawings are held daily or more than once a day (McCrary and Pavlak
2002, 16).
These instant games are much more likely to appeal to active
players, since they can buy a ticket and find out whether they won
over a short period of time, sometimes in a matter of minutes. Instant
276 Chrestomathy: Volume 2, 2003
games also tend to have lower payouts per dollar spent than do the
bigger weekly games, meaning players of instant games are highly
unlikely to ever get much of their money back.

Figure 5 clearly shows that the overall effect of the Georgia

lottery is to benefit the upper and middle classes.
 Tomlinson: Economic Inequalities of State Lotteries 277
The bulk of the Georgia lottery’s educational expenditures are
through the HOPE Scholarship Program. McCrary and Pavlak’s
findings, as seen in Figure 5, clearly indicate that recipients of these
scholarship are primarily white. They are also most likely to be children
of casual players or people who do not play the lottery at all, and their
parents most likely have a college degree or some college education.
These findings were corroborated by Rubenstein and Scafidi
(2002), who did a similar study of the distributional consequences of
the Georgia lottery. They set out to answer their titular question,
“Who Pays and Who Benefits?” They studied the net spending of
groups on lottery tickets and the total benefits that group received.
Figure 6 shows Rubenstein and Scafidi’s net benefit calculations from
the lottery for each social group.
Figure 6

Net Spending, Benefit, and Net Benefit from Georgia State Lottery by
Social Characteristics (Rubenstein and Scafidi, 2002)

Group Net Spending Benefit Net Benefit

All $155.52 $205.12 $49.60

Whites $132.99 $248.39 $115.40

Non-whites $220.68 $80.01 - $140.67

<$15k $270.84 $110.29 - $160.55

$15k to $25k $323.16 $138.35 - $184.81
$25k to $35k $90.45 $169.89 $79.44
$35k to $50k $236.57 $196.15 - $40.42
$50k to $75k $143.62 $257.43 $113.81
>$75k -$39.46 $344.43 $383.89

<High School $162.29 $185.43 $23.14

High School grads $132.35 $225.99 $93.64
Some college $164.94 $196.99 $32.05
College grads $172.22 $194.36 $22.14
278 Chrestomathy: Volume 2, 2003
Their findings clearly show, in plain statistical terms, who is paying for
the Georgia lottery and who is benefiting from it. Like McCrary and
Pavlak, their findings show that the poor and minorities pay the most
for the lottery, while the white and upper class reap the greatest rewards.
The average nonwhite household loses $140.67 per year, and the
average household in the $15000 to $25000 income bracket loses
$184.81 per year to the lottery. On the other hand, the average white
household gains $115.40 from the lottery, while the average household
with an income of over $75,000 gains a staggering $383.89 per year in
benefits from the lottery.
Overall, these studies quite clearly show that the rosy image
projected by Georgia politicians and politicians in other states
trumpeting the greatness of “the Georgia model” is not truthful. A
disproportionate share of lottery revenue comes from the poor, the
uneducated, and racial minorities. A disproportionate share of that
revenue, in the form of college scholarships, goes into the pockets of
the upper class, middle class, and whites. Despite Georgia lottery
supporters’ claims that their lottery reaches out to the poor through
the educational programs, it is clear that what actually happens is a
redistribution of money from the underprivileged to the privileged.

The South Carolina Education Lottery

The Georgia Model soon came to its neighbor, South Carolina.
Whether or not to institute a state lottery was the crucial issue in the
1998 state elections, according to most experts. The idea of an
“education lottery” was championed by gubernatorial candidate Jim
Hodges, who won the election largely due to support for the lottery,
which increased turnout among those who do not ordinarily vote. A
large proportion of his campaign ads were devoted to the issue.
Especially effective were a series of “Bubba” ads, featuring a Georgia
convenience store clerk that extolled the values of the Georgia lottery.
One ad featured Bubba saying, “Here in Georgia, we appreciate you
South Carolinians buying our lottery tickets. Over a hundred million
dollars worth in just one year! Why, you all have paid for thousands
of Georgia children to go to our colleges and paid for computers in
every one of our classrooms. Now come on South Carolina, don’t
ruin it for us by getting your own lottery. Just remember, here in
 Tomlinson: Economic Inequalities of State Lotteries 279
Georgia, we love South Carolinians buying our lottery tickets”
(Geddings 2001, 2). The lottery referendum passed in a landslide.
Like Georgia, South Carolina’s lottery was an education lottery,
and funds were used to finance LIFE scholarships. South Carolina’s
lottery proposal also had a new program, called the HOPE scholarship,
that was specifically geared towards low-income students who lacked
all of the qualifications to get a LIFE scholarship, but still displayed
academic potential. The vast majority of the revenue from South
Carolina’s Education Lottery was slated to go towards higher education.
This money took the form of scholarships, grants, endowed chairs,
technology assistance, and other expenditures. While it is too early to
pass definitive judgment, this money does not seem to have had the
desired effect of educational improvement. Of the 6,441 college
freshmen who received LIFE scholarships in 2000, 50.5% of them
had lost the scholarships before the start of the 2001 school year
(Alongi 2002). According the South Carolina Lottery Commission,
less than 25% of lottery proceeds go to public schools lower than the
college level.
To add to the problem, South Carolina’s state government has
made a series of education cuts in the last few years, putting many
schools in dire straits. The problem has gotten so bad that teachers
have been laid off, and there has even been talk of furloughing teachers.
South Carolina recently elected a governor whose primary campaign
promise was to cut taxes and cut the budget, so it seems unlikely the
problem will be resolved any time soon. While the South Carolina
state lottery has not been in effect long enough for any comprehensive
study of its economic distribution consequences to be undertaken,
inferences can be made. Very little lottery revenue has gone into the
public schools, and what has gone in is not enough to offset what the
state legislature has taken out. The South Carolina lottery provides
only one program specifically for the poor. That is the HOPE
scholarship, which makes up less than 4% of total lottery educational
expenditures, and the legislature is currently considering eliminating
that program completely. South Carolina’s public schools have not
improved since the lottery was instituted, while the lottery has pumped
over 76% of its expenditures into higher education (South Carolina
Lottery Commission). By doing this without any substantial effort to
280 Chrestomathy: Volume 2, 2003
aid the poor and minorities in their effort to make it to a point where
they can pursue higher education, the South Carolina Education Lottery
has committed itself to using money spent mostly by the poor to educate
mostly children of the upper classes. South Carolina sold its lottery to
its citizens partly on the strength of a vision that the lottery would
help the poor attend college and better their lives. By all appearances,
however, that is a vision that the South Carolina Education Lottery is
not prepared to deliver.

Conclusion
When studying the data on the actual impact of state lotteries
on social inequality, one cannot help but come away astonished. The
fact that it is a “voluntary tax” gets the government off the hook for
many practices which would be considered unconscionable if they
came to pass through direct taxation. For example, imagine if a
government leader came forward with a new tax plan that would take
$140.67 per year from every minority household and $184.81 per year
from all working poor households. Furthermore, the government leader
would go on to say that this money would be used to give $115.40 per
year to every white household and $383.89 per year to every upper
class household. The public outcry over such a plan would be harsh
and swift, and this government leader would likely not be a leader for
much longer. However, these are the proven statistics of the Georgia
lottery, which not only enjoys substantial support in Georgia, but is
being used as the model for state lotteries across the nation. Likewise,
if a politician advocated levying a 1.51 percent income tax on those
earning less than $10,000 a year, people would call him or her a cruel
hearted miser with no sympathy for the Americans in poverty who are
struggling to survive day to day. However, these are the real statistics
in Detroit, and politicians who advocate similar lottery plans are touted
as sympathetic legislators who are diligently working to help the poor
receive new educational opportunities.
It cannot be reasonably said that state lotteries are a major
source of the social inequality in our country. Race, education, and
class are all certainly much more important factors in keeping the rich
in wealth and keeping the poor in poverty. However, our country
seems to be going in the wrong direction in terms of the growing gap
 Tomlinson: Economic Inequalities of State Lotteries 281
between rich and poor, and the trend badly needs to be reversed. State
lotteries seem to be a perfect example of the type of institutions in
this nation that subtly exacerbate the problem of inequality. It fits
perfectly within the context of Marx’s theory of class conflict, as the
case could certainly be made that lotteries are merely an institution
created by the rich to take money from the poor and consolidate it in
the hands of the privileged. All the while, state lotteries give the poor
and minorities the illusion that they have equal opportunities at
educational success, and if they fail to break out of poverty it is through
some fault of their own. In reality, however, these disadvantaged
groups will rarely see any of the lottery revenues. Lottery revenues
are consistently concentrated at the highest levels of education, where
most disadvantaged students will never get. This is because the quality
of the public schools is rarely improved by lottery revenues, and
oftentimes becomes even worse. This means that almost without
exception disadvantaged students will never get the fundamental
knowledge and skills to succeed in college. Even if they do happen to
meet the requirements for a lottery-sponsored scholarship, it seems
highly unlikely that they will be able to sustain a 3.0 grade point average
at the college level. If they fail to meet this, they will lose the
scholarship and be forced to drop out of college, only marginally better
off than if they had never attended college at all. Perhaps the worst
part of this sequence is that the social and political leaders can then
claim, “It’s not our fault: we gave them a chance and they failed.”
So what can be done about lotteries? The easy answer is to
say get rid of state lotteries, but lotteries have become so entrenched
at this point that it seems highly unlikely. There are, however, ways in
which lottery funds can be used to benefit the disadvantaged and
underprivileged. A fundamental shift would need to take place, with
the lottery revenues being diverted from higher education to elementary
education. If the lottery money was used to rebuild and improve
failing public schools, it would go a long way towards helping to bring
about social equality. However, this, too, seems unlikely, given how
firmly entrenched the concept of lottery money for scholarships is.
This system could also be tweaked to help promote social equality.
Grade point average requirements could be discarded or lessened for
students from underprivileged backgrounds or failing schools. Perhaps
282 Chrestomathy: Volume 2, 2003
the lottery could also be used to finance special programs for the poor
or minorities where they would not be subject to the same high school
achievement requirements as most scholarship programs. Another
possibility is using lottery revenue to establish special college tutoring
programs for students who may have the potential for college success,
but not necessarily the educational background.
The overall research on state lotteries show that it is a
regressive, inefficient way of raising funds that is popular mainly for
its political success rather than its success in reaching concrete results.
The burden of state lotteries is born disproportionately by the poor,
the uneducated, and minorities. The benefits of state lotteries are
disproportionately reaped by wealthy, educated whites. The net result
of state lotteries is a significant exacerbation of social inequality, and
the problem is spread to more and more states. The only solution
seems to be to educate people on the real economic consequences of
the lottery, and perhaps then citizens will stand up against what amounts
to an unfair system of taxation.

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