Maybe your state is seeing this, too.
Here in Florida, lottery ticket sales have slowed as folks spend their money on stuff like gasoline and food. This is making tight government budgets, especially for education, even tighter.
The Massachusetts Lottery found a way to raise ticket sales by launching
a higher-dollar scratch-off game, which
gambling treatment groups say appeals to compulsive gamblers.
New Jersey is thinking about allowing ticket sales in stores such as Target and Home Depot, for example.
In New Hampshire, lottery officials are wondering how they can sustain sales at convenience markets if people can't afford to buy gas.
Enterprise idea
The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch wanted to know which neighborhoods generate the most lottery spending, so it took state data and chunked it out by neighborhood. Not at all surprisingly, the poorest communities spent the most on lotteries.
The paper's findings include:
- Stores in the lowest-income communities, where median incomes range from $10,000 to $37,810,
sold more than $589 million in instant games and lottery tickets last year.
- Lottery sales in Ohio's most affluent areas, where median incomes range from $60,600 to
$125,000, totaled $297.6 million.
- There were more than 10,200 winners in the lowest-income areas compared with the 5,456 winners
who listed addresses in the wealthiest ZIP codes.
- There were 2,329 stores selling lottery tickets in the lowest-income areas compared with 1,208
located in the highest-income areas.
- The results are similar to findings in a 1999 national survey conducted for the National
Gambling Impact Study Commission, which was created by Congress.
