eli5 Rather than having 1 winner with the lottery with sometimes over 1 hundred million pounds, why not share that money out amongst many, many people?

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Is there a reason that most of the time there is only 1 jackpot winner? When the winning money goes into the tens of millions I always think, why not just share the money out over lots of people and give say 10,000 here and 500,000 there. Wouldn’t this be better for the economy rather than having just 1 person have it all?

In: Economics

8 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The lottery winner is paid by a part of the total lottery ticket sale profits. The more people buy tickets, the more money you get as a prize. People are notoriously bad at statistics and risk-reward assessment so one big prize attracts more buyers than may smaller prizes. People won’t pay for a small chance at some decent money, but will for a smaller chance at life changing money.

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