Starting on April 4, the Iowa Lottery will start offering a $50 scratch-off game, making it the 15th state to do so.
The two $30 scratch-offs with the greatest top rewards currently available from the Iowa Lottery are the most expensive ones. $50 to $500,000 in prizes are up for grabs in the brand-new "$500,000 Cash" scratch game.
According to Mary Neubauer, a representative for the Iowa Lottery, while the $50 game is new to Iowa, it has been around for years in certain other states.
The reason why expensive scratch-off games are appealing is because they have better odds. According to Neubauer, the odds of winning the $500,000 Cash game in Iowa are 1 in 6.67 for a payout of $50 and 1 in 120,000 for the top prize.
Those odds are in contrast to the current odds of winning the 45-state PowerBall game, which are 1 in 38.2 for any reward and 1 in 292,201,338 for the top prize.
Texas agrees with this. According to studies by the Texas Lottery Commission, persons who are "less educated and lower income" are more inclined to play scratch-off games.
According to its data, players who weren't employed had a higher propensity to buy scratch-off tickets than those who were working or were retired.
According to Nower, who called lotteries a "regressive tax on the poor," they attract to people of lower means because they "offer some prospect of gaining money without a major investment."
According to her, the lottery is trying to increase spending among its regular customers, who don't often have a lot of money to spend. Despite the possibility of significantly (lower) chances, most people will still lose most of the time.