Lottery is a fixture in American society, with Americans spending upwards of $100 billion on tickets every year. The games are often touted as ways to boost state budgets, but just how much those ticket sales add up to in broader revenue and what the trade-offs are for people losing money deserve closer scrutiny.

Despite the popular notion that you can increase your odds of winning the lottery by playing more frequently or buying more tickets for the same drawing, there’s no way to alter a random number generator’s probability. Each ticket has independent odds, and the more you buy, the more likely it is that you won’t win.

States began to introduce state-run lotteries in the late 1960s, and the industry soon took off. By the end of the 1970s, lotteries were well established in Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island.

These states were attractive to lottery organizers because they lacked other major sources of public finance and had large Catholic populations that were tolerant of gambling activities. Moreover, they were located near borders with other states that also had state-run lotteries.

In fact, the spread of lotteries in America can be traced to a single state border, the Vermont-New Hampshire line, where New York and Vermont competed to attract gamblers with the promise of huge jackpots. Today, many of the same states still offer lotteries, and they are a key source of state revenue. But these state governments need to rethink how they promote the games. The truth is, there are more than a few people who have won big, but for most, winning the lottery is a costly pastime that will not improve their lives.