Lottery is a form of gambling where participants purchase tickets and hope to win a prize. Prize money may be in the form of cash or goods. Often the lottery is organized so that a percentage of profits are donated to good causes. This form of gambling has long been popular in Europe and the United States.

In the early American colonies, public lotteries were common, and many of the founding fathers participated in them. Benjamin Franklin held a lottery to raise funds for cannons to defend Philadelphia against the British, John Hancock ran one to help build Boston’s Faneuil Hall, and George Washington sponsored one to finance construction of a road across Virginia’s mountains.

State legislators introduced lotteries because of a need for revenue. They argued that people would gamble anyway, so the state might as well capture some of this inevitable activity by promoting the lottery. This argument, however, ignores the fact that lotteries promote gambling for people who wouldn’t have gambled otherwise. It also obscures the regressivity of lottery profits, which fall among poor and problem gamblers while rising among those with higher incomes.

Moreover, the profits of state lotteries are primarily from ticket sales. The prizes themselves come from a portion of the total pool of revenue after expenses (including profits for the promoters) and taxes have been deducted. While the prizes are typically large, winning the lottery is an extremely rare event. Even when the prize is substantial, winners often go bankrupt within a few years and find themselves in need of other sources of income.