This post about the "lotto" was actually inspired by a facebook post shared on the Sociological Life FB page, which is facebook.com/sociologicallife. (Check out the FB page and feel free to comment). The post was sharing an article by conservative media man Andrew Breitbart. The article is titled "Poor Households Earning $13K Per Year Spend Over $1K On Lottery Tickets".
Let me begin my response by saying Thank You to Brandon Patterson, who shared the post. This is a disheartening headline. Also, I want to be very clear that I agree with many of the critics out there that the lottery by and large is a tax on the poor. While the lottery is certainly voluntary and legal, and I do not know enough to say whether it intentionally preys on the poor, the reality is that it does effect them substantially. Much of the money collected in the lottery comes from those who can least afford it. Ironically, I receive lottery scholarship money to help pay for my education, but I still recognize the problem.
Back to the article: I have two responses to this article. I will discuss the first one on this post, and the second in a much shorter follow up post.
The first response is a simple question: Where is the source that supports this headline??? As a sociologist I am always curious about the data. I want to see the actual methods and results associated with claims, both because I enjoy understanding the research and because media claims are often hyperbolic or outright unfounded. Finding the answer to my question proved to be more difficult than I thought.
The only link Breitbart gives seems to be arbitrarily tied to the random word "rely" in his piece. This link leads here, to theweek.com article, "How the $500 million Powerball lottery is a tax on the poor." I don't understand why Breitbart would use a bold statistic in his headline and not even give an original source or explanation for that statistic. So, my journey began to find the source of this provocative statistic. The Week article quoted and linked to Natasha Lennard at Salon (another media site), and in this quote she mentioned a version of the statistic and gave the vague credit to a PBS report earlier this year.
Therefore, I followed that link to Natasha's post, "Powerball's Dark Side." There I saw Natasha's statement, which was actually the best supported yet in that it gave both credit and a link right there in the text for anyone to verify. Here is her statement:
"Meanwhile, a PBS report earlier this year showed that, for America’s very poorest, the lottery is a heavy expenditure: Households that earn at most $13,000 a year spend 9 percent of their money on lottery tickets."
As you can see, she placed a helpful link to the PBS report directly in the statement. However, when I clicked on this link I found out that PBS is not the original source either. (((heavy sigh))). But, I was now very close. In the video of the PBS report (and the transcript provided below it), the reporter quotes the statistic and gives credit to the actual source: "Households earning under $13,000 per year spend about 9 percent of their income on lottery tickets, on average, according to a 2008 study from 'The Journal of Risk and Uncertainty.'"
Finally, the original source... well, at least the title of the journal where the original source came from. Unfortunately, PBS does not bother to provide any actual links or reference to the specific source. My long rabbit trail from Breitbart's grand title led me through 3 other sites in search of the source only to stop here. So, I had to google it in hopes of finding the data. This is where it gets surprising and frustrating.
I googled around and quickly found several sites espousing this statistic and referencing the same journal study, which turned out to be "Myopic risk-seeking: The impact of narrow decision bracketing on lottery play". This is the copiously alluded to source of this very provocative statistic.
Here comes the crazy part: I DO NOT SEE THIS STATISTIC IN HERE ANYWHERE. I kid you not. Numerous sites of varying degrees of credibility and prestige are parroting this same statistic, but I did not see it in the source at all! What is going on here? I am shocked. Now, I am very open to the possibility that I have somehow missed it. I did not scour the article. I did skim through all the results and even did a search by terms to try and find this statistic in case I missed it. Nothing. So, I also looked over the data to see if this statistic was derived from the data but not in the discussion. Nothing. However, I am still human and just a lowly student, so I may be wrong. In fact, I invite anyone to find what I have missed and point it out to me in the comments below or on the FB page. Honestly, I would rather be wrong on this one. I dare you! ... No, but seriously this is crazy. Where are they getting this statistic? Am I missing something?
Stay tuned for the next post to hear my second response: Understanding.
D. Matthew Ray
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