The lottery is the most common way state governments raise money for everything from public safety to education. The game contributes billions of dollars to the economy every year. Despite its popularity, there is much debate over whether it is ethically sound or socially just. Regardless of the moral issues, most people play the lottery for the opportunity to win big. However, the odds of winning are very low, so it is important to understand how the lottery works before deciding to play.

The term “lottery” derives from the ancient practice of drawing lots to distribute property or other assets. In the Bible, Moses is told to divide land by lot, and ancient Roman emperors used lottery drawings to give away slaves and other valuables during Saturnalian feasts. Lotteries were also popular in early American colonial settlements despite Protestant proscriptions against gambling. They helped finance such institutions as Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, King’s College (now Columbia), and William and Mary. Privately organized lotteries were common as a means to sell products and properties for more money than could be obtained in a regular sale.

Modern state lotteries rely on the same basic principles of probability as their ancient predecessors, but they’re also heavily influenced by economic fluctuations. Lottery sales increase when incomes fall, unemployment rises, and poverty rates go up. This is because disadvantaged groups are more likely to have access to the advertising for the games. They’re also more likely to be the recipients of state services, such as subsidized housing, anti-poverty programs, and health care.

In the postwar years, when America’s prosperity was booming and states could afford to provide generous social safety nets without raising taxes too high, lotteries were an attractive source of revenue. But by the nineteen-sixties, as inflation and war costs mounted, it became difficult to balance state budgets without raising taxes or cutting services. Lottery sales soared as states searched for solutions to their fiscal crises that wouldn’t enrage an increasingly anti-tax electorate.

Cohen argues that defenders of state-run gambling often dismiss long-standing ethical objections to the practice by claiming that since people are going to gamble anyway, the government might as well make some of the profits. This argument may have its limits—by the same logic, governments should sell heroin—but it gave moral cover to people who approved of lotteries for other reasons. Many white voters, Cohen writes, supported legalization because they feared that Black numbers players would end up footing the bill for services they didn’t want to pay for, such as better schools in the urban areas where most poor and Black people lived.

While Jackson’s story portrays the villagers as innocent, their blind acceptance of the lottery allows for ritual murder to occur. The children assemble first, of course, to take part in the drawing. By making the story seem like a fun family event, Jackson shows us that the villagers no longer consider this lottery to be either wrong or murderous, which is a clear indication of how much this lottery has skewed their moral sense.