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Liberty Vittert is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Statistics at Washington University in St. Louis.
The draw for the Mega Millions jackpot on October 23 reached $ 1.6 billion. Bigger and bigger jackpots should mean more money from state taxes to spend on public services such as education. But that does not happen. In the United States, when lotteries were created in the mid-twentieth century, they were sold to states for benefit the American public. So what is really happening?
First, let's see how lottery jackpots have become so important. This particular jackpot started at $ 40 million in July and, week after week, no one had drawn the winning numbers, but the tickets were still being bought.
You too have the chance to win the biggest Mega Millions jackpot of all time with the simple purchase of a $ 2 ticket. However, your chances are pretty slim. With a 1 chance out of 300 million to choose the corresponding numbers, you are three times more likely to be killed by a vending machine. An easier way to properly manage your chances: it's like dropping a coin and having a head 30 times in a row.
About half of Americans play the lottery today, compared with nearly 70% in the 1980s. This means that the lottery must extract more money from fewer people – a disturbing trend for lottery runners.
Mega Millions has decided to reduce the chances of winning each player, to make the jackpots grow. Before 2017, players would choose five numbers between 1 and 75, then a number between 1 and 15. Now, each player chooses five numbers between 1 and 70, then a number between 1 and 25. This increases your chances of matching five numbers. and receive some kind of prize, while decreasing your chances of winning all the shebang. In addition, the price of a ticket has doubled.
Apparently, as the jackpot increases, more and more people are ready to buy a ticket. As a result, jackpots are growing and people are spending more – $ 223 a year from the average American, according to a LENDedu online market survey.
The profits of Mega Millions are divided among 46 lottery jurisdictions – 44 states, D.C. and the US Virgin Islands. Overall, 27 states have earmarked all or part of the proceeds of the lottery for education. In Washington, DC, lotto dollars go to a general fund; in Colorado, the funds go to the protection of the environment; and in Kansas, a portion of the money is used to pay for juvenile detention centers.
The lottery has been touted as a way to generate more money for education – but most state legislatures have not used this money as additional funding. Instead, they use the lottery money to pay the education budget, spending the money that would have been used for education if it was not enough. There was no lottery budget for other things. As a result, public schools rarely get a budget increase.
An April study by the North Carolina Public Policy Research Center found that many states – including California, Florida, and Michigan – simply substitute lottery revenues for ordinary credits. In 2016, North Carolina spent less of its total budget on education than before the launch of the lottery.
With states like New York that generated $ 3.3 billion in revenue from the lottery in 2016, this is a big bait change.
This does not necessarily mean that it's time to put an end to the lottery. But this raises the question: Is lottery money good for a state? It funds some government services, but you do not always know what. And the harm of gambling addiction has to be taken into account one way or another.
For the moment, I will buy a ticket for this Mega Millions jackpot. I mean, whoever should win.
This article is republished from The conversation under Creative Commons license.
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