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The New York State Lottery: a Regressive Tax

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The New York State Lottery: a Regressive Tax (C) Tax Analysts 2010. All rights reserved. does not claim copyright in any public domain or third party content. The New York State Lottery: A Regressive Tax by Brent Kramer Prior Studies This author did not attempt a thorough search of Brent Kramer is a research associate at the Fiscal Policy the literature; it was enough to read a few articles to Institute (Albany and New York City) and teaches econom- conclude that poorer people generally spend propor- ics at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. tionally more of their income on lottery tickets. A 1987 study by Charles T. Clotfelter and Philip J. Cook looked at the earliest games in the 1980s and found ‘‘that the implicit tax is regressive in virtually Voluntary payments to the government are all cases.’’ Donald I. Price and E. Shawn Novak generally not thought of as taxes. But states have (1999) analyzed sales of three types of lotteries in begun in the last 30 years to obtain significant Texas and concluded that each one was ‘‘highly revenue from lottery sales, which some see as regressive.’’ Hansen et al. (2000) analyzed sales over voluntary taxes. ‘‘From 1980 to 1991, U.S. national five states, over several years, and concluded that lottery sales increased by 22.3 percent per year... the ‘‘lottery tax’’ was indeed regressive. Kana A. Ellis from 1992 to 1996, the average annual growth rate (2007) argued that the ‘‘lottery tax [is] ‘doubly re- was 12.6 percent,’’ according to Ann Hansen, gressive,’ including the propensity of the poor to play Anthony D. Miyazaki, and David E. Sprott (2000). the lottery more frequently, problems with lottery New York state’s lotteries — the largest in the advertisements and lack of regulation, and finally country, according to the State Lottery Commission the fact that the poor are much less likely to receive — accounted for 3.2 percent of the state fund for the benefits of lottery-funded programs, such as fiscal 2009.1 If a state government persistently merit-based scholarships.’’ suggests to its residents that they will receive a But what about the supposed benefits of state benefit (a chance at riches) from a purchase (a lotteries for education funding? Most states with lottery ticket) — and New York’s lotteries are lotteries claim that the revenue will be dedicated to aggressively advertised in this way — economic education and use this as part of their advertising. theory would argue that those who believe that But Susan A. MacManus (1989) has argued that message are acting rationally by making such a ‘‘education rarely is a real winner in a fiscal sense purchase. If the promised return is by far illusory — when its initial linkage with the lottery is primarily and it is — it would be hard to argue that those as a device to gain political support for a new purchases do not constitute a tax on those who revenue source.’’ She added: believe the state’s hype,2 especially when the state What has actually occurred in many states is a relies on this revenue. fiscal-substitution shell game. Legislators sim- ply substitute lottery revenues for those from sales and income taxes and use the tax rev- 1 enues that previously funded education to sup- Author’s calculation. Total state fund (taxes and miscel- port other functions. The result of this game is laneousreceipts)was$80.26billion(http://publications.budget. state.ny.us/eBudget1011/FinancialPlan/FinPlan.pdf, p. 35), often no net fiscal gain for public education. while the lottery commission transfer to the general fund was Mary O. Borg and Paul M. Mason (1988) went $2.54 billion (http://www.nylottery.org/storelayoutimages/nyl_ further and analyzed the purported benefits from fnl_stmnt.pdf). Illinois lotteries. Looking at state educational 2There have been suggestions that what lottery pur- chasers are really buying is a measure of hope and excite- allocations by demographic group before and after ment, which may indeed be obtained. This may be poorer the introduction of Illinois’s games, they found that residents’ analogue to stock investors’ ‘‘animal spirits.’’ ‘‘the statutory recipient of the lottery revenues is State Tax Notes, March 29, 2010 961 Special Report Figure 1. (C) Tax Analysts 2010. All rights reserved. does not claim copyright in any public domain or third party content. Lottery Sales as Share of Total Household Income, 2009 by PUMA 4.0% 3.5% 3.0% 2.5% 2.0% e of total household income 1.5% 1.0% Lottery sales as0.5% shar 0.0% $0 $20,000 $40,000 $60,000 $80,000 $100,000 $120,000 Median household income PUMAs are Public Use Microdata Areas, the smallest area identifiable in the American Community Survey public data, of about 100,000 population each. 2008 lottery sales by ZIP code provided by N.Y.State Lottery Commission; sales allocated to PUMAs via zip-to-PUMA crosswalk provided by Missouri Census Data Center (http://mcdc2.missouri.edu/websas/geocorr2k.html). Median household income (averages of 2006-2008 American Community Survey data) from American Fact Finder. Total household income imputed from the same source. Major commuter areas of Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn omitted from analysis. not the actual beneficiary of increased funding.’’ New York City, 2008: Method Assuming that lottery revenue was dedicated to New York City has a vast and diverse population education, deducting the educational benefits re- living over a large area; its 8 million residents live in ceived by the average lottery-playing household more than 150 ZIP codes. Although New York City is from its lottery expenses ‘‘reduces the regressivity not exactly a microcosm of the nation, lottery pur- but falls far short of eliminating it.’’ In another chase patterns there are most likely indicative of paper (1990), they concluded that ‘‘earmarked national trends. lotteries have not benefited the statutory recipients, The best source for income estimates for neigh- rather, they have led to opportunities for state borhoods is the American Community Survey (ACS). legislators to project the image that they are The author downloaded mean and median house- increasing overall allocations to the designated hold income and count data from the American Fact recipients without really doing so.’’ Finder applet online3 (an average of ACS results from 2006 to 2008) for New York City public use State lotteries, despite being purportedly used for microdata areas (PUMAs), the closest geographic education, thus seem to be a method of increasing level to neighborhoods, and imputed aggregate state revenue at the expense (mostly) of poorer household incomes (mean household income x num- residents, with the benefits distributed at best ber of households). Because Manhattan below 59th across the whole state budget, and at worst to those Street has a very high number of inward commuters communities that spend distinctly less on these games. In a word, revenue is fungible: When raising taxes is politically taboo, why not create another lottery game for people to throw away money on? 3Available at http://factfinder.census.gov. 962 State Tax Notes, March 29, 2010 Special Report Figure 2. (C) Tax Analysts 2010. All rights reserved. does not claim copyright in any public domain or third party content. Trend Line (slope = -0.03 percentage per $10,000) 4.0% 3.5% 3.0% 2.5% 2.0% e of total household income 1.5% 1.0% Lottery sales as0.5% shar 0.0% $0 $20,000 $40,000 $60,000 $80,000 $100,000 $120,000 Median household income (who may buy tickets there but do not live there), New York City, 2008: Results those PUMAs4 and their associated ZIP codes were Visual inspection of a plot of total lottery sales as dropped from the analysis, as was downtown Brook- a fraction of total household income, against median lyn5 for the same reason. After eliminating the household income, by PUMA, strongly indicates the high-inward-commuter areas, there are 50 PUMAs high regressivity of this tax (Figure 1). left in the analysis. Further analysis confirms the visual inspection. A simple regression (finding a trend line) says that on The author obtained from the State Lottery Com- average, each $10,000 increase in median household mission a list of 2008 lottery sales in the city by ZIP income for a PUMA leads to a 0.3 percentage point code. Unfortunately, PUMAs do not correspond di- decline in the share of total area income spent on rectly with ZIP code areas. However, the Missouri lotteries. This prediction alone accounts for 71 per- Census Data Center6 provides a ‘‘crosswalk’’ that al- cent of the variation in this share. Figure 2 shows locates ZIP code populations to PUMAs. Assuming the implied trend line. that populations within ZIP codes are economically relatively homogeneous, and purchase lottery tickets Measuring Regressivity in relatively similar proportions, the author used this Where does this tax fit in among other taxes? crosswalk to allocate ZIP-code-based sales to PU- Daniel Suits (1977) developed what seems to be the MAs. The underlying assumption, of course, is that accepted standard measure for the progressivity of lottery purchases in a ZIP code area (outside the taxes. In an analogy to the Gini measure of income excluded areas) are an indicator of purchases by resi- distribution, his method involves charting cumula- dents of that ZIP code area. tive share of income along the horizontal axis (starting with the poorest — in this case the PUMA with the lowest median household income), and cumulative share of tax burden on the vertical axis. 4PUMAs 3807 through 3810. 5 For a perfectly proportional (flat) tax, the data PUMA 4004, comprising part of five ZIP codes.
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