The official lottery is an app that allows you to play your favorite lotto games anywhere, anytime. With the official lottery, you can check your ticket, find a retailer, purchase games and more. Play responsibly. Must be 18 years or older to play.

Cohen’s book focuses on the modern incarnation of state-run lotteries, which began in the mid-nineteenth century as the “American dream” of prosperity began to falter. Increasing population and inflation combined with the costs of wars, social safety net programs, and other public works projects strained state budgets. Balancing the budget required either raising taxes or cutting services, both of which proved to be deeply unpopular with voters. Lotteries, which promised to solve the problem by generating revenue for public projects through a series of drawings, were an appealing alternative.

State lotteries soon became, as Cohen writes, “the favored funding source for everything from civil defense to church construction.” Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were financed partly by them, and the first modern government-run US lottery was established in Puerto Rico in 1934. By the late twentieth century, lotteries had spread across the country and accounted for about five per cent of state education spending.

But there is a dark side to the lottery. As studies have shown, it is regressive: Low-income Americans spend more of their money on the instant scratch-off games that are marketed to them than do wealthier residents. And the winnings they receive are often used to finance gambling addictions and other forms of harmful behavior.