The Georgia Lottery: Assessing Its Administrative, Economic, and Political Effects |
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| Authors: | JOSEPH MCCRARY STEPHEN E. CONDREY |
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| Affiliation: | Joseph McCrary is a Researcher with the Baltimore City Public School System. He recently completed his doctorate in the University of Georgia's Public Administration program. His research interests focus on public sector economics, education, and public accountability.;Stephen E. Condrey is a Senior Associate and Program Director, Human Resource Management Technical Assistance, with the University of Georgia's Carl Vinson Institute of Government and Adjunct Professor of Political Science, where he teaches in the Master of Public Administration program. He has over twenty years of professional experience in human resource management and has consulted nationally and internationally with over three hundred organizations concerning personnel-related issues. He presently serves as Managing Editor of the Review of Public Personnel Administration, is on the editorial boards of Public Administration Review and Public Personnel Management, and formerly served on the publications board of the American Society for Public Administration. Dr. Condrey is the editor of the Handbook of Human Resource Management in Government (Jossey-Bass, 1998) and Radical Reform of the Civil Service (Lexington Books, 2001, with Robert Maranto). He is the 1998 recipient of the University of Georgia's Walter Barnard Hill Award for Distinguished Achievement in Public Service and Outreach. He is the Chair-elect of the Section on Personnel Administration and Labor Relations of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA). |
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| Abstract: | This article examines the Georgia lottery as a “policy laboratory” and its potential effect on state‐level policy diffusion. The authors summarize an extensive research project they directed that included a survey of every state that offers a lottery, a general population survey of Georgia citizen attitudes toward the lottery, and results from an economic model summarizing the economic effects of the lottery. The analysis reveals that the Georgia lottery has been a significant source of revenue for the state's budget and operates in an administratively cost‐effective manner. The analysis also confirms the conventional wisdom that lower‐income households spend a greater proportionate share of their income on the lottery and that African Americans are more frequent players than whites. Furthermore, the Georgia lottery enjoys broad public support, the key to which appears to be the earmarking of lottery funds to specific, new, popular education programs. However, the data reveal that those educational programs promulgated by the Georgia lottery benefit citizens from both high and low socioeconomic status. Finally, the article suggests that lottery‐generated funds may reach a plateau or peak during the first decade of implementation and that state policymakers should design lottery‐funded programs accordingly. |
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