A lottery is a competition in which numbered tickets are sold and prizes are awarded to the holders of those numbers. It is generally conducted by a state or a private corporation. It is not to be confused with a raffle, a game in which the prizes are goods or services instead of cash.

The word lottery derives from the Dutch noun lot, meaning fate, and is thought to have been coined in the Low Countries in the first half of the 15th century. The earliest recorded lotteries were in towns, where they raised money for town fortifications and to help the poor. In the 17th and 18th centuries, many states instituted public lotteries to raise money for a wide variety of public uses.

Today, almost every country in the world has some form of state-sponsored lottery. Ticket sales are a major source of tax revenues. Some of the proceeds are devoted to paying out prize money, but others go toward operating costs and advertising. The remaining amount available for prizes is often set as a fixed percentage of the total receipts.

But are lottery games a good way for governments to raise money? The answer is complicated. On the one hand, a state needs to collect revenue in order to provide for its residents, and it does not want to tax them too heavily. Lottery revenue is one way to do that without putting too much strain on the population. On the other hand, a lottery is gambling, and it creates gamblers. It is not necessarily a benign activity, but it is one that states must take advantage of to generate the funds they need.