Report: Lottery sales highest in low-income areas

Urban areas, which tend to be lower-income areas, have smaller shops, state lottery officials say.

COLUMBUS (AP) — The Ohio Lottery collected $2.3 billion last year, and sales were the highest in lower-income neighborhoods, The Columbus Dispatch reported Sunday.

Sales in areas where the median household income was less than $38,000 were twice as high as those posted in areas where median incomes exceeded $60,000, the newspaper said in its analysis.

The Dispatch also reported that were twice as many winners in lower-income areas, which also had twice as many stores selling lottery tickets.

Ohio is hoping to add another $73 million a year in state revenue when the lottery starts video Keno gambling July 1. Critics say the move — like the lottery itself — is a tax on those who can least afford it.

“Everyone is always screaming about doing things to help people who are the most in need,” said Rob Walgate, vice president of the Ohio Roundtable, a Strongsville-based public policy organization whose Web site describes its mission “to restore traditional Judeo-Christian principles to American public policy.”

“The problem is we keep expanding opportunities for them to throw money away,” Walgate said.

Ohio Lottery Director Michael Dolan said players are free to make their own choices.

“You’re passing judgment on another law-abiding citizen’s law-abiding activities, as if that person isn’t capable of managing his life,” Dolan said.

Odds of winning the lottery’s biggest prizes are long. The multistate Mega Millions game posts 1-in-176 million odds. Ohio’s Classic Lotto game has 1-in-14 million odds. And the state’s $20 scratch-off game — $5 million Cash Winfall — has a 1-in-3.6 million shot of winning.

Yet in lower-income areas, there’s no shortage of customers, including those at Yearling Market and Carryout in Whitehall, a Columbus suburb where the median income is $38,700.

With more than $2.2 million in total annual sales, the store is among the top five lottery outlets statewide.

Ohio lottery officials say it makes sense that more lottery sales are in lower-income neighborhoods because urban areas, which tend to be lower-income, have more small shops. And middle-income suburban residents commonly buy lottery tickets at stores near their urban workplaces, said Connie Miller, the lottery’s deputy director of operations.

The lottery spends 60 percent of its $2.3 billion revenue on prizes. Another 30 percent goes toward funding public schools, replacing money that otherwise would be spent from the state’s general fund, which is made up of income, sales and business taxes.

The lottery provided $669 million for Ohio schools in 2007.

The Dispatch’s analysis echoed a federal survey in 1999. The National Gambling Impact Study Commission found gamblers with annual household incomes of less than $10,000 spent almost three times as much on lottery games as those with incomes of more than $50,000.

The same survey also found that high school dropouts spent almost four times as much as college graduates.