[maat55]

Originally Posted by disneysteve

I did a little searching and found several references to the regressive effect of lotteries, but few actual statistics.

There was this:
"Per-capita ticket sales were much higher in lower-income ZIP codes. In communities with average household income below $52,000, the lottery sold an average of $250 of tickets per person annually. That was more than double the amount for ZIP codes with $100,000 households."

and this:
"in zip codes with lower per capita incomes, more tickets were purchased:

Take the towns of Hillsborough and Belleville.

The two have roughly the same population, about 36,000, and similar daytime populations that include people who work but don't live in town, about 42,000.

When it comes to sales of lottery tickets, however, there's no comparison. Average annual sales at stores in Hillsborough, a wealthy Somerset County town, are about $1.8 million. In Belleville, a blue-collar town outside Newark in Essex County, it's $13.3 million."

I believe this to be true across the board.