Through November, sales in this area exceeded $239.86 million, up 5.8 percent from the same period in 2009 and 23.3 percent from 2005.
Jeannie Roberts, communications director with the Ohio Lottery, said the lottery is selling more tickets largely because it has introduced new, popular games, such as Keno and Powerball.
But not everyone views the increased sales as especially good news.
George Loewenstein is a behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who has studied the psychological dimensions of playing the lottery. He said low-income people tend to play the lottery at a disproportionate rate compared to wealthier members of society, making it essentially a tax on the poor.
“Our studies would predict that lottery sales would go up in times of recession, because when people feel subjectively poorer, we found they are more likely to play the lottery,” he said. “In Ohio there is a lot of economic gloom because industries are disappearing. ... I think the lottery serves as a substitute for real economic opportunity.”
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