Gas and food prices are up, wages and savings down. What are ya gonna do? Play the lottery, of course.

This morning the Times has a piece entitled “Sweet Dreams In Hard Times Add To Lottery Sales,” it’s a whimsical little thing, talking about how Lotto sales spike during bleak economic periods. They report that, “Of the 42 states with lotteries, at least 29 reported increased sales in their most recent fiscal year.”

That’s a little counterintuitive considering we’re talking about spending money on an indulgence, but that point of view over looks the “I might end up stinking rich” factor. Which, all told, might be the strongest in the equation. The Times’ piece hits that nail on the head, quoting Lotto officials and players(Including Sheyda Belli, 38, a human resources director: “I always joke with my husband that I’m a winner, until they tell me I’m not.”) who talk about why people play more even as they have less to spend.

What they don’t touch on (at all) is that the Lottery is essentially an extremely regressive form of taxation. States claim that lotteries are essential sources of income, especially for funding education. And, they say, they’re fun! What gets little attention is that it’s been clear for years and years that money raised through the Lottery is coming disproportionately from poor people.

That the Lottery is regressive has been well established academically for a long time. The most recent study on the subject was in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology in July 2007, “Hitting the jackpot or hitting the skids: entertainment, poverty, and the demand for state lotteries.”

Among its findings are these gems:

“TWO EXPLANATIONS may account for the widely observed phenomenon that the poor spend a disproportionate amount of their income on lottery tickets. First, lower-income individuals may substitute lottery play for more expensive forms of entertainment. Second, low-income consumers may view lotteries as a convenient and otherwise rare opportunity for radically improving their standard of living. Our study tests these two competing hypotheses. We find no evidence to support the former entertainment hypothesis. In contrast, we find strong evidence in support of the desperation hypothesis.

“The results indicate that it is individuals falling just below the poverty line who contribute the largest increase to lottery sales. This observation suggests that lottery participation is strongest among those in poverty who seemingly have the greatest chance of escaping it. With its low expected return, lottery participation may be a factor tending to frustrate policy efforts to lift the poor out of poverty.”