5 reasons NOT to play the Mega Millions lottery

The Mega Millions jackpot hit $1.6 billion after there was no winner last week. That’s a cash option of $904 million and makes this jackpot the largest in U.S. history. The draw will be held at 11 p.m. ET on Tuesday. The second-largest win in the U.S. was the $1.586 billion Powerball jackpot won on Jan. 13, 2016. Don’t hold your breath for a win if you buy a ticket. Statistics show you are more likely to die or kill someone while driving 2 miles or be attacked by a shark.Get more news about 彩票包网开版,you can vist loto98.com

Mega Millions commercials encourage all people to participate: “Mega Millions is bigger. Make sure your dreams are too!” But critics say studies overwhelmingly show that those who buy the most tickets (and on a regular basis) are the ones who can least afford to do so.

Lottery jackpots are overwhelming played by low-income Americans, studies show. Les Bernal, national director of Stop Predatory Gambling, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group, says the rags to riches advertising is a fantasy for more vulnerable people, and they are more tempted by jackpots than wealthier Americans. In fact, he calls scratch cards and lottery tickets a “Hail Mary investment strategy for the poor.”

It seems like everyone wants to play when the stakes are this big. The lottery jackpot only becomes “progressive” — meaning that high earners spend more on tickets than more than low earners — when the jackpot is at least $806 million or more, according to this 2004 study of the Powerball lottery by Emily Oster, currently a professor of economics at Brown University. That’s more than $1 billion in 2018 dollars.

“Richer individuals may only be willing to play at higher jackpots — they have a higher threshold for entry — which would produce this result,” she wrote. “If income tracks education, the rich may have a better understanding of the odds. This, too, could cause richer players to wait until higher jackpots to enter.” As such, lottery cards are likely to be more “regressive,” that is mostly played by lower income Americans, Oster said.

“Most theories of why people play lotteries rely either on a ‘fun’ component of gambling which increases lottery utility or on players having a poor understanding of the odds of the game,” she added. She used demographic U.S. Census Bureau statistics about each zip code (including information on income, education, race, unemployment and urban population).

“When lottery-playing individuals were asked if they bought their lotto tickets in their neighborhood, 84% of people who played more frequently than once a year said they did,” Oster added. “Since a neighborhood is probably smaller than a zip code in most cases, this number would likely be even higher were they asked about within zip code purchases. This provides some confidence in a high correlation between population and purchaser demographics.”