A review of demographic studies commissioned by the South Carolina Education Lottery showed: African-Americans made up 19% of the state’s adult population but accounted for almost 39% of frequent players; people in households earning under $40,000 accounted for 28% of the state’s population but made up 54% percent of frequent players; people with no high school diploma accounted for 8% of the state’s population and 21% of frequent players; and people whose highest educational achievement is a high school diploma or GED made up 25% of the total population and 34% percent of frequent players.
Lowering the Standard of Living for Ordinary Citizens
The Impact of Casino Gambling on Personal Bankruptcy Filing Rates
John M. Barron, Dept. of Economics at Purdue University; Michael E Staten of the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. and Stephanie M. Wilshusen Georgetown looked at larger market areas and determined, “Our analysis predicts an 8% decline in 1998 filing rates for casino and collar counties, and a 1.4% decline in filing rates nationwide if one were to eliminate casino gambling.”
The Impact of Casino Gambling on Personal Bankruptcy Filing Rates
Bankruptcy Rates: A County Level Analysis
At Creighton University, Ernie Goss, Professor of Economics and Edward Morse, Professor of Law, used bankruptcy information to compare the roughly 250 U.S. counties with commercial or Indian casinos. “Our regression analysis on matched-pair counties indicates that those counties that legalized casino gambling during the 1990s experienced a cumulative growth rate in individual bankruptcies that was more than double the growth rate for corresponding non-casino counties.”
The Impact of Casino Gambling on Bankruptcy Rates – A County Level Analysis
State-Sanctioned Casinos and Exploiting the Working Poor
In 2010, the Lehigh Valley Research Consortium released a report showing that 48 percent of those below the poverty line in the Lehigh Valley intend to gamble at the Sands Casino in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. ”The casino ads always show young glamorous-looking people gambling,” said Michele Moser Deegan, a Muhlenberg College associate professor who directs the consortium. ”But when you go inside, you can see that it really is the working poor and middle class. This survey shows that.”
The Failure to Regulate the Gambling Business Effectively: Incentives for Perpetual Non-Compliance
Social and economic costs of legalized gambling, and the difficulty of its regulation are the subjects of this Southern Illinois University Law Review article by John Warren Kindt. The evidence shows that gambling causes addiction, bankruptcy, crime, and corruption in its surrounding communities. All of the social costs associated with those problems can add up, and there is shockingly little pressure on government or the predatory gambling business to do better.
More Than 30% of Problem Gamblers Admitted to Stealing from the Workplace to Gamble or Pay Gambling Debts
R. Keith Schwer, William Thompson and Daryl Nakamuro compiled this fascinating study of problem and pathological gamblers in which they estimate the social costs to gambling’s host community, arriving at a conservative figure above $19,000 per problem gambler. Some of the detail is particularly compelling: when pathological gamblers run out of legitimate sources of money they consider illegal sources. Starting close at hand, they pass bad checks. The study found that 63.3% wrote such checks. They also look for money in the workplace. Also, 30.1% admitted to stealing from the workplace in order to gamble or pay gambling debts. This is about the same portion who stole from the workplace in other surveys: 31.7% in Wisconsin, 37.1% in South Carolina, and 40.7% in Connecticut. A majority, 50.6%, of the respondents indicated that they had stolen money or things and used it to gamble or to pay gambling-related debts.
Beyond the Limits of Recreation – Social Costs of Gambling in Southern Nevada
California Taxpayers Pay Even If They Don’t Play
Predatory gambling operators are fond of framing their scheme as a “voluntary tax.” Yet according to the California Attorney General’s 2006 study titled “Gambling in the Golden State”, problem and pathological gamblers cost California $1 billion per year, more than half what the state received in gambling revenues. Read the report below.
The economic growth fallacy of supporting casinos
Proponents of casinos will tell you to think of casinos and institutionalized gambling as economic development; the truth is, revenue from gambling funds government – not growth. Not one study unaffiliated with the American Gaming Association backs up the claim that casinos contribute to economic development.
In this column penned for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Larry Platt powerfully and effectively dismantles the specious argument peddled by the casino lobby across the nation. A must-read for all the nation’s citizens.
Hope and Hard Luck: Poorest Counties Lead State in Per Capita Lottery Sales
This first-rate report by Sarah Ovaska of North Carolina Policy Watch details how the most impoverished counties in North Carolina spend the most money on the state lottery. The report below also includes a link to a county-by-county map detailing lottery sales.