A contest in which tokens are distributed or sold, the winning token or tokens being secretly predetermined or ultimately selected in a random drawing: often sponsored by a state or other organization as a means of raising funds. Also used of any undertaking whose outcome depends on chance selections, as by the drawing of lots: They considered combat duty a lottery.

The word is in wide use in the United States, where it is a popular form of gambling that raises money for a variety of social and charitable purposes. While financial lotteries are widely criticized as addictive forms of gambling, the vast majority of lottery proceeds go to social welfare and educational programs. In addition, the lottery has been used as a way to distribute public works funding and to settle disputes over land.

In the years after World War II, the lottery was promoted as a way for states to expand their array of services without especially onerous taxes on the middle class and working class. But that arrangement began to unravel in the 1960s as the costs of the Vietnam War inflated inflation and as people became increasingly dissatisfied with government-run services and indifferent to government-financed programs. State governments were looking for ways to get out from under their debts, and they saw the lottery as an attractive revenue source.

Some people are more inclined to gamble than others, and for some people, playing the lottery is an affordable hobby. But the majority of players are poor, and it’s possible that winning a lottery jackpot can actually reduce a person’s standard of living.

There are a number of different kinds of lotteries, from the traditional games where winners collect cash prizes to the lottery-like arrangements that award units in a housing development or kindergarten placements. The bottom 20 to 30 percent of America’s population plays the lottery, and they are disproportionately lower-income, less educated, nonwhite, and male. These groups have enough discretionary income to spend a large share of their budgets on tickets, and they do so with the understanding that there’s a good chance they won’t win.

Lottery commissions try to tamp down the regressiveness of these arrangements by talking about how wacky and weird it is for people to play, making it sound like a game, rather than the serious business of buying tickets that are expensive. But those messages are not very effective, and they obscure how much money people spend on these games. The average player spends $50 or $100 a week, and some play for years, spending a big chunk of their incomes on tickets. They are committed gamblers who don’t take the odds of winning lightly.