A lottery is an arrangement in which prizes are allocated by a process that relies wholly on chance. The most common example is a financial lottery, in which paying participants buy tickets for a group of numbers, or have machines randomly spit them out, and win prizes if enough of their numbers match those that are drawn by a machine. Many states and the District of Columbia have such lotteries.

But lottery games also occur in other contexts. For instance, a family might have a “lottery day” in which the head of the household draws a single, folded slip of paper from a box, and, depending on the result, the whole family has to perform certain tasks (such as cleaning the house, washing the dishes, or doing a chore).

The idea behind lottery dates back centuries. The Old Testament mentions drawing lots to divide land, and Roman emperors used lotteries to give away property and slaves. During the fourteenth century, lottery games became a popular pastime in the Low Countries, where they were sometimes used as a painless substitute for taxation and to raise money for a wide variety of public uses.

Some people play the lottery for fun, but others take it very seriously. They see it as their best or only chance of a better life, and they may spend $50 or $100 every week on tickets. Often, these people are surprised when they talk to economists about the odds of winning. The reason is that, in their eyes, the disutility of a monetary loss is outweighed by the combined utility of non-monetary benefits.