A lottery is a game of chance in which many people purchase chances at winning a prize, such as money or goods. Prizes may be randomly awarded by drawing lots, or they may be contested by individuals or companies (e.g., sports teams, businesses, or governments). Some states regulate the games; others endorse them, and some ban them.

Although lotteries are a form of gambling, they are often marketed as benign and community-oriented. They are advertised as “safe” because they don’t involve the same level of risk as other forms of gambling. Furthermore, most players do not view their winnings as gambling income but rather as a way to improve their financial situation.

As a result, the lottery’s popularity has surged over the past decade. In the United States, the average lottery jackpot is now a quarter of a billion dollars, and the number of participants has doubled since 1980.

But the growth of the lottery has coincided with a decline in economic security for Americans. This trend began in the nineteen-sixties and accelerated through the nineteen-eighties as the gap between rich and poor widened, job security and pensions declined, health-care costs increased, and the American dream of rising income and prosperity seemed to be coming apart.

To combat this trend, lottery promoters began offering bigger prizes and better odds. The New York State Lottery started in 1978 with one-in-three million odds, and it now offers one-in-five million. These changes have made the games more appealing to the middle class. The biggest winners of the lottery are scratch-off tickets, which make up between 60 and 65 percent of all lottery sales. These games are more regressive than the larger Powerball or Mega Millions, and they tend to be played by lower- and middle-class people.

These new types of games have also pushed the lottery’s share among black populations, who have historically been the least likely to play. In addition to the big jackpots, these games offer a daily numbers option that is especially popular in African American communities. The percentage of lottery sales attributed to daily numbers games has risen from about 15 percent in the early 1990s to more than 35 percent today, and they are the fastest-growing type of lottery game.

These trends have raised concerns that the lottery is becoming a kind of hidden tax on poor communities. But it is important to distinguish between the culture of lottery playing and the individual researchers and IRB members who conform to this culture. It is not the right thing to do to penalize people who want to participate in the lottery simply because they cannot afford to do otherwise. It is a much better policy to provide these people with alternative methods of improving their lives. But we still need to think carefully about the ways in which lotteries can be used to undermine the research enterprise as a whole. This is a subject that deserves far more attention than it receives at present.