The lottery is a form of gambling in which prizes are allocated by drawing lots. It is a common way for state governments to raise funds, and it has been the source of many notable buildings, including part of Columbia University in New York City. Lotteries have a long history in the United States, but they became widely popular in the immediate post-World War II period when state governments were trying to expand their social safety nets without imposing onerous taxes on the working class.

In fact, state lottery officials have tended to rely on two messages primarily, both of which obscure how much people play and the regressivity of those games. One is to promote the idea that winning a lottery prize is an experience that is fun. The other is to imply that lottery money is being used for a public good, and this is especially effective in times of economic stress, when the winners are being encouraged to use their prizes to avoid higher tax rates or cuts to government programs.

Whether or not these claims are true, it is certainly the case that the state governments that run lotteries have a very clear policy goal. They want to maximize the number of people who buy tickets. They also want to minimize the costs of organizing and promoting the lottery, which must be deducted from the prize pool. The remaining prize pool is distributed among the winners, and a percentage of it goes as revenues and profits to the lottery sponsor. The other thing they do is to try to balance the size of the prize pool between few large prizes and many small ones.