I was listening to Planet Money’s latest episode “How the scratch off lottery changed America”. The thing that stood out to me was the mention that Massachusetts is an outlier when it comes to scratch ticket sales. The average adult in Massachusetts spends $1,037 per year on lottery tickets, mostly scratch-offs. This is significantly higher than other states. For example, states like Wyoming and North Dakota are on the lower end, with around $50 per adult per year. States in the middle range, such as California, Texas, and Illinois, see around $300 per adult per year. New York, Michigan, and Georgia are toward the higher end of the middle range, at around $500-$600 per adult per year.