The lottery is a form of gambling in which players purchase tickets and hope to win prizes by matching numbers. The drawing of lots is recorded in ancient documents, and the lottery was first formally linked to the United States in 1612. Today, state-run lotteries raise millions of dollars for a variety of public causes, from building schools and highways to establishing medical research funds.

But the money isn’t always well spent. The lottery is a notoriously addictive form of gambling that can actually decrease an individual’s quality of life. It can also be socially destructive, causing families to break apart.

Lotteries are often touted as a way to save the children, but the truth is that they’re just another form of taxation that comes with many hidden costs.

Lottery games can be very expensive to play, and the odds of winning are astronomically slim. Yet the lottery continues to be one of America’s most popular forms of gambling. People spend an average of $100 billion on lottery tickets every year, and states promote it as a legitimate source of revenue. But just how meaningful that revenue is in broader state budgets, and whether it’s worth the trade-off to people losing so much money, deserves scrutiny. This is the first in a series of articles that will look at how the lottery works and its impact on American society.