Who doesn’t dream of winning the lottery one day? Even people who don’t play probably fantacize every now and then about becoming a millionaire overnight: something few things but the lottery can help you achieve.
The truth, of course, is that your odds of winning the lottery are very slim: as slim as one in 195 million. And if you did win, you could end up receiving less than half of the advertised payout amount. Worst case? You could still end up blowing through your winnings and filing bankruptcy.
There is, of course, an entity that profits from the lottery no matter what: the state in which it is administered. Though the majority of the money collected from the sale of lottery tickets does go back into the jackpot, states collect their share. To find out which states collect the most, how much the winners get to keep and other interesting lottery facts, see our latest infographic.
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12 Comments so far
leave a commentHi Ross…
I’d like to point out to you that Arkansas does have a lottery, It’s barely a year old, but we have one! Just want you let you know so you can update your infographic!
Please, do some better research. Superenalotto in Italy is now 158,250,283.12 USD. Your “Mega Millions” isn’t even half of it.
Wow it’s so not worth even trying lol Hey someone has to win it and if you don’t try then you’ll never win. Boo hoo you end up with less than half……let’s see half of 20 million isn’t enough to live on? Sounds like sour grapes to me. Buy more lottery tickets and stop whining.
The chart is wrong. The 25% federal “tax” is actually the mandatory gross withholding on lottery winnings. You still must report the winnings as taxable income and pay taxes at the appropirate rate. Which, if you’re in the $100M bracket, is currently 35%.
It shows that the annual payments are a larger total payout, but that’s misleading because it doesn’t account for inflation. Accounting for inflation, the payouts are almost the exact same value. A $48,531,600 cash payment in 1983 would be worth $103,174,857 in 2009. Taking the $2,698,461 annual payments starting in 1983 would be worth $103,419,076 in 2009. If you’re going to invest your lottery winnings, you can do a lot more with $48M up front than $2.6M annually, making the cash option the sound financial choice. Of course, if you’re going to blow all $48M on a mansion that you won’t be able to afford to keep up five years later, the annual option looks better.. but I expect someone with such poor financial self-control is doomed anyway.
The “Income from lottery sales” looks more like a population map than a useful graphic. What’s the lottery income per capita?
Receiving less than the advertised payout due to taxes isn’t applicable to Lotto Max. By law, Canadian lotteries have to advertise the after-tax value of the jackpot. Any variation from the advertised jackpot is due to them being estimates, are sometimes higher and sometimes lower, but very rarely by a significant amount.
What is the X axis in the last graph measuring?
It appears it’s measuring the payouts received by lottery winners. I’m surprised there isn’t a higher category on the x-axis.
Not at all states require you to pay state taxes on winnings. In California, lottery winnings are tax-exempt; with a $100m jackpot, this little detail means millions of dollars and is not insubstantial.
“Biggest lotteries” is incredibly lacking.
SuperEnalotto has had a jackpot of $189m.
EuroMillions has hit $235m twice.
Lottery? That be my charity!
The info about lottery winners filing for bankruptcy is misleading. I remember reading about this study, and they looked at a list of lottery winners who won 10k or more (I think) during a certain time period. Not jackpot winners. Obviously, if you’re in a situation where bankruptcy is your only option, 10k (or even 20k or 30k) isn’t going to make that much of a difference. Most likely, people who are more likely to file for bankruptcy are also the same people who tend to buy lottery tickets (the lower and middle economic classes). There may be a relationship between the two groups, but the study did not prove cause and effect.