Lottery is a gambling game in which people pay a small amount of money for the chance to win a prize. The term lottery is most often used in reference to financial lotteries, where participants pay a fee for the chance to win a large sum of money. However, non-monetary prizes are also often awarded in some types of lotteries. Regardless of the type of lottery, there are some common features of the games, including the fact that the prize is determined by random selection and that the amount of money won cannot be influenced by a player’s previous actions.

The term lottery was probably first used in the 15th century, when the earliest state-sponsored lotteries were organized. Those first European lotteries offered prizes in the form of cash or goods. In some of these early lotteries, the total prize pool was a percentage of all receipts, while in others the size and number of prizes were predetermined.

In modern times, the vast majority of lotteries offer a fixed prize fund for each draw, which is a set amount of money regardless of the number of tickets sold. The promoters of these lotteries often use this format to reduce the risk that they won’t sell enough tickets to cover their expenses, and because it provides a greater degree of consistency for the players.

In the immediate post-World War II period, the public was convinced that lotteries could allow states to expand their social safety nets without increasing taxes on working and middle class Americans too much. That arrangement began to break down in the 1960s, with the rise of inflation and the cost of the Vietnam War leading many states to seek new revenue sources.