A lottery is a process for allocating something, usually money, by chance. Some examples of lotteries are the process of determining kindergarten admission at a certain school, or the procedure for assigning units in a subsidized housing block. Others include the selection of students to a course, or the choice of recipients of a vaccine. All of these processes are inherently unfair, since they rely on chance and cannot reasonably be expected to prevent a significant proportion of the people who wish to participate from doing so.
Cohen’s argument revolves around a series of developments in late twentieth-century America. As the economy sagged and government revenue dwindled, balancing budgets became increasingly difficult without raising taxes or cutting services. Increasingly, voters began to oppose both options. Against this backdrop, state-run gambling emerged as an alternative solution to the funding crisis. In 1964, New Hampshire approved the first modern lottery, and 13 states followed suit in the following years. Dismissing long-standing ethical objections to gambling, these new advocates argued that, since people were going to gamble anyway, the government might as well reap some of the profits.
As with any commercial product, lottery sales rise and fall in response to economic fluctuations, but their overall level tends to be quite stable. When incomes decline, unemployment grows, and poverty rates rise, lottery sales increase; when the economy is booming, ticket sales decline. In addition, as is true with most advertising, lottery products are most heavily promoted in poor, black, and Latino neighborhoods, which disproportionately purchase the tickets.
In order for a lottery to function, there must be a pool of money from which prizes can be awarded. This pool must contain sufficient funds to cover costs of organizing and promoting the lottery, as well as to pay out winners. In order to attract enough participants, the pool must also contain a sufficiently large prize. As a rule, a small percentage of the total pool is taken as administrative expenses and profits, while the remaining portion is available for awarding prizes.
The amount of the prize varies from lottery to lottery, but there are some common elements. For one, there must be a method of recording the identities of the bettors and the amounts they stake. This might be as simple as a numbered receipt or it may involve an electronic system that records each bettor’s selected numbers. Normally, bettors are required to sign their names on the receipts or tickets so that they can be identified later, and so that they can be contacted if they win.
Another crucial element is the randomness of the process. This can be tested by analyzing a sample of data. For example, if an application has been assigned the same position on several occasions, this is a good indication of randomness. In the case of the lottery, it can be tested by looking at the distribution of the winning positions in a graph: if the colors of each row and column overlap significantly, the lottery is not truly random.