Lottery is the largest form of gambling in the United States, and it raises substantial amounts of revenue for state governments. Often, this money is earmarked for a variety of public purposes, including education. But just how meaningful that money is, and whether it’s worth the trade-off to people who spend a lot of money buying tickets, merits serious scrutiny.

Lotteries are a type of gambling that involves a random draw of numbers or other symbols to determine winners. The first recorded lottery dates back to the 15th century, when a number of cities in the Low Countries held lottery games to raise funds for municipal projects like town fortifications and helping the poor.

In modern times, lottery games are typically organized by states or public corporations, and their operations are structured similar to other commercial businesses. Lottery revenues tend to expand dramatically when they first open, then level off and even decline—a phenomenon known as “lottery fatigue”—requiring constant innovation in the form of new games in order to keep revenue growth stable.

The vast majority of lottery money goes toward prize payments, and a smaller percentage goes to pay commissions to retailers and to lottery administrators. The remaining amount is sometimes earmarked for other purposes. Some research suggests that a portion of lottery proceeds is spent on compulsive gambler treatment and other public programs, but most of it appears to go into advertising. There is also evidence that lottery play skews socioeconomically, with higher-income neighborhoods playing at far lower rates than their share of the population.