The Oddity of the Lottery

The modern state lotteries have their origin in the post-World War II period when states sought ways to expand services without especially onerous taxes on the working classes and middle class. They usually follow a similar path: the state legislates a monopoly for itself; establishes a public corporation or agency to run it; begins operations with a modest number of relatively simple games; and, due to constant pressure for additional revenues, progressively expands its size and complexity, often by introducing new games. Lottery revenues are then earmarked for a particular public purpose, such as education.

The villagers in Shirley Jackson’s story, like many of our own societies, place tremendous value on tradition. In fact, the community as a whole feels that they must perform a “lottery” every year to select a single member of the community to be stoned to death for their sins.

But there’s something very odd about this lottery arrangement. It is, in fact, an extremely unjust and unfair way of allocating rewards that relies entirely on chance.

The lottery is a form of gambling. And gambling is generally viewed as bad, whether you’re talking about the kind of low-level illegal gambling that has long been prevalent in some communities, or the big state lotteries that have become popular since 1964. Research has shown that lottery players tend to come from middle-income neighborhoods, with very few from lower income areas. And while people who play the lottery do indeed have all sorts of irrational gambling behaviors, they also go into it clear-eyed about the odds and know that they’re playing a game of chance with an objectively poor return on investment.