Gambling: the Iniquity of a Voluntary Tax. The relationship between socio-economic position and propensity of gambling

Italian sociology has largely overlooked gambling, even if it is a widespreadphenomenon with important socio-economic redistributive consequences. Inthis paper, we aim to fill this gap exploring the relationship between socio-economicposition and propensity to gamble among Italian households in the last decade. Inthe first part, we describe the main features of legal gambling in Italy and its importancefor the State's revenues. In the second part, we review the main researchfindings from other countries, we discuss the main theories about social stratificationof gambling and elaborate our research hypotheses. In the last part, we analyse datafrom three waves of the Istat's survey on Consumption of Italian Households (1999,2003, 2008), focusing on participation and monthly expenditure in «Lotto, lotteriesand soccer gambling». Results of non-parametric (Lorentz curves, Suits index) andparametric analyses (probit and OLS regression) indicate that gambling in Italy canbe considered as a form of (voluntary) regressive taxation, because the less affluenthouseholds spend on gambling a higher proportion of their income than richerfamilies. Furthermore, the effect of income on gambling expenditure is larger amongthe lower educated families. At the end, there is evidence of a higher propensityto gamble among households of the working class, with fewer women and elderly,and from the South of Italy.