FRONT PAGE State Lotteries: A Tax on the Uneducated and the Poor Americans now spend over $85 billion a year on lottery tickets. That's more than we spend on sporting events, books, video games, movies, and music combined. That spending works out to about $650 a household. Poor people are proportionally the biggest buyers of lottery tickets. Households with less than $25,000 of income spend $1,100 a year on lottery tickets. By contrast, households with more than $50,000 of income buy only $300 of lottery tickets each year. Education also affects lottery spending: 2.7 percent of high school dropouts are compulsive lottery players, while only 1.1 percent of college grads play compulsively. Because lottery games are a sucker's game to start with-payouts average less than 60 percent of sales-lotteries are
FRONT PAGE State Lotteries: A Tax on the Uneducated and the Poor Americans now spend over $85 billion a year on lottery tickets. That's more than we spend on sporting events, books, video games, movies, and music combined. That spending works out to about $650 a household. Poor people are proportionally the biggest buyers of lottery tickets. Households with less than $25,000 of income spend $1,100 a year on lottery tickets. By contrast, households with more than $50,000 of income buy only $300 of lottery tickets each year. Education also affects lottery spending: 2.7 percent of high school dropouts are compulsive lottery players, while only 1.1 percent of college grads play compulsively. Because lottery games are a sucker's game to start with-payouts average less than 60 percent of sales-lotteries are
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Transcribed Image Text:FRONT PAGE
State Lotteries: A Tax on the Uneducated and the Poor
Americans now spend over $85 billion a year on lottery
tickets. That's more than we spend on sporting events,
books, video games, movies, and music combined. That
spending works out to about $650 a household.
Poor people are proportionally the biggest buyers of lottery
tickets. Households with less than $25,000 of income spend
$1,100 a year on lottery tickets. By contrast, households
with more than $50,000 of income buy only $300 of lottery
tickets each year.
Education also affects lottery spending: 2.7 percent of high
school dropouts are compulsive lottery players, while only
1.1 percent of college grads play compulsively. Because
lottery games are a sucker's game to start with-payouts
average less than 60 percent of sales-lotteries are
effectively a regressive tax on the uneducated and the poor.
Source: Research on lottery sales.
According to Front Page Economics, what percentage of income is spent on lottery tickets by
Instructions: Enter your responses as a percentage rounded to two decimal places.
a. a low-income family with an income of $20,000 per year?
1%
b. a middle-income family with an income of $60,000 per year?
%
Expert Solution

Step 1: Define key term
Regressive Tax: A regressive tax is a tax system where the tax rate decreases as the income or wealth of the taxpayer increases.
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