A lottery is an arrangement in which one or more prizes are awarded by chance. Prizes may be money or goods or services. Lotteries have been in use since ancient times. For example, Old Testament law instructed the Israelites to distribute land by lot. The Romans used lotteries to give away slaves and property during Saturnalian feasts. Modern state lotteries, however, are not a return to those ancient arrangements but rather a very different kind of lottery. They are designed to generate massive profits for the promoters who run them and the states that endorse them.

Public policy makers have rarely taken the broad public welfare into consideration when establishing a lottery or deciding how much to spend on it. The result is that state lotteries have evolved in remarkably similar ways, with each new iteration adding to the overall size of the industry. In the process, they have built up an enormous dependency on gambling revenues.

Despite the popularity of the lottery and its success in raising revenues, some people continue to question whether a lottery is an appropriate public service. These questions focus on how the lottery is promoted, its perceived regressive impact on lower-income groups and its effect on compulsive gamblers. In addition, critics worry that the way the lottery is regulated and run conflicts with the principle of free enterprise and that it gives state officials little or no control over its operations.