IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ntj/journl/v51y1998i1p71-82.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Horizontal Equity Implications of the Lottery Tax

Author

Listed:
  • Stranahan, Harriet
  • Borg, Mary O.

Abstract

Based on Musgrave’s traditional definition of horizontal equity, this paper estimates whether the lottery tax results in a differential tax burden by race, educational attainment, or age within households that have equal economic positions. A second question that is addressed is whether lottery advertising intensifies any horizontal inequities that exist. Indeed, this study finds that, among individuals with otherwise identical characteristics, African Americans bear a significantly higher lottery tax burden. Other minority groups and individuals with the lowest educational attainment also bear a larger lottery tax burden, although the difference is not significant at the ten percent level. In addition, the results suggest that lottery advertising has its greatest impact on African Americans, thus intensifying the horizontal inequity of the lottery tax and resulting in a greater tax burden for African Americans as compared to identical Caucasians.

Suggested Citation

  • Stranahan, Harriet & Borg, Mary O., 1998. "Horizontal Equity Implications of the Lottery Tax," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 51(1), pages 71-82, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:ntj:journl:v:51:y:1998:i:1:p:71-82
    DOI: 10.1086/NTJ41789312
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1086/NTJ41789312
    Download Restriction: Access is restricted to subscribers and members of the National Tax Association.

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1086/NTJ41789312
    Download Restriction: Access is restricted to subscribers and members of the National Tax Association.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/NTJ41789312?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jack Habib, 1979. "Horizontal Equity with Respect to Family Size," Public Finance Review, , vol. 7(3), pages 283-302, July.
    2. Kondor, Yaakov, 1976. "Optimal Deviations from Horizontal Equity: The Case of Family Size: A Reply," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 31(3), pages 440-442.
    3. John R. Livernois, 1987. "The Redistributive Effects of Lotteries: Evidence from Canada," Public Finance Review, , vol. 15(3), pages 339-351, July.
    4. Jerome F. Heavey, 1978. "The Incidence of State Lottery Taxes," Public Finance Review, , vol. 6(4), pages 415-426, October.
    5. Scott, Frank & Garen, John, 1994. "Probability of purchase, amount of purchase, and the demographic incidence of the lottery tax," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 121-143, May.
    6. Kondor, Yaakov, 1975. "Optimal Deviations from Horizontal Equity: The Case of Family Size," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 30(2), pages 216-221.
    7. Borg, Mary O. & Mason, Paul M., 1988. "The Budgetary Incidence of a Lottery to Support Education," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 41(1), pages 75-85, March.
    8. Cragg, John G, 1971. "Some Statistical Models for Limited Dependent Variables with Application to the Demand for Durable Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(5), pages 829-844, September.
    9. Wagstaff, Adam & van Doorslaer, Eddy & Paci, Pierella, 1989. "Equity in the Finance and Delivery of Health Care: Some Tentative Cross-country Comparisons," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 5(1), pages 89-112, Spring.
    10. Lin, Tsai-Fen & Schmidt, Peter, 1984. "A Test of the Tobit Specification against an Alternative Suggested by Cragg," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 66(1), pages 174-177, February.
    11. Shoup, Carl S, 1988. "Distribution of Benefits from Government Services: Horizontal Equity," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 43(1), pages 1-18.
    12. Charles T. Clotfelter & Philip J. Cook, 1987. "Implicit Taxation in Lottery Finance," NBER Working Papers 2246, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rubenstein, Ross & Scafidi, Benjamin, 2002. "Who Pays and Who Benefits? Examining the Distributional Consequences of the Georgia Lottery for Education," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 55(N. 2), pages 223-238, June.
    2. Humphreys, Brad & Perez, Levi, 2011. "Lottery Participants and Revenues: An International Survey of Economic Research on Lotteries," Working Papers 2011-17, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.
    3. Harriet A. Stranahan & Mary O. Borg, 2004. "Some Futures are Brighter than Others: the Net Benefits Received by Florida Bright Futures Scholarship Recipients," Public Finance Review, , vol. 32(1), pages 105-126, January.
    4. Glenn P. Jenkins & Chun-Yan Kuo, 2004. "The Taxation and Regulation of Casino’s and Games of Chance in the Dominican Republic," Development Discussion Papers 2004-07, JDI Executive Programs.
    5. Rubenstein, Ross & Scafidi, Benjamin, 2002. "Who Pays and Who Benefits? Examining the Distributional Consequences of the Georgia Lottery for Education," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 55(2), pages 223-238, June.
    6. Richard B. Whitaker, 2007. "State Lotteries and Agency Costs: Hidden Costs to Nonparticipants," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(3), pages 533-544, July.
    7. A. Bussu & C. Detotto, 2013. "The effect of socio-economic and emotional factors on gambling behaviour," Working Paper CRENoS 201305, Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia.
    8. Price, Donald I. & Novak, E. Shawn, 1999. "The Tax Incidence of Three Texas Lottery Games: Regressivity, Race, and Education," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 52(4), pages 741-752, December.
    9. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2007:i:42:p:1-11 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Brown, Ryan P. & Rork, Jonathan C., 2005. "Copycat gaming: A spatial analysis of state lottery structure," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(6), pages 795-807, November.
    11. Cho-Min Lin & Kung-Cheng Lin, 2007. "The demand for lottery expenditure in Taiwan: a quantile regression approach," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(42), pages 1-11.
    12. Zhiming Cheng & Russell Smyth & Gong Sun, 2013. "Participation and Expenditure of Rural-Urban Migrants in the Illegal Lottery in China," Monash Economics Working Papers 24-13, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    13. Donald I. Price & E. Shawn Novak, 2000. "The Income Redistribution Effects of Texas State Lottery Games," Public Finance Review, , vol. 28(1), pages 82-92, January.
    14. Stephen Fink & Alan Marco & Jonathan Rork, 2004. "Lotto nothing? The budgetary impact of state lotteries," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(21), pages 2357-2367.
    15. Price, Donald I. & Novak, E. Shawn, 1999. "The Tax Incidence of Three Texas Lottery Games: Regressivity, Race, and Education," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 52(n. 4), pages 741-52, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stranahan, Harriet & Borg, Mary O., 1998. "Horizontal Equity Implications of the Lottery Tax," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 51(n. 1), pages 71-82, March.
    2. Harriet A. Stranahan & Mary O. Borg, 1998. "Separating the Decisions of Lottery Expenditures and Participation: a Truncated Tobit Approach," Public Finance Review, , vol. 26(2), pages 99-117, March.
    3. Giebeler, Constanze & Rebeggiani, Luca, 2019. "Who Loves to Gamble? Socio-Economic Factors Determining Gambling Behaviour in Germany," MPRA Paper 94735, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Frank Crowley & John Eakins & Declan Jordan, 2012. "Participation,Expenditure and Regressivity in the Irish Lottery:Evidence from Irish Household Budget Survey 2004/2005," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 43(2), pages 199-225.
    5. Levi Pérez & Brad R. Humphreys, 2011. "The Income Elasticity of Lottery: New Evidence from Micro Data," Public Finance Review, , vol. 39(4), pages 551-570, July.
    6. Humphreys, Brad & Perez, Levi, 2011. "Lottery Participants and Revenues: An International Survey of Economic Research on Lotteries," Working Papers 2011-17, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.
    7. Benoit Dostie & Désiré Vencatachellum, 2004. "Compulsory and Voluntary Remittances: Evidence from Child Domestic Workers in Tunisia," Cahiers de recherche 04-04, HEC Montréal, Institut d'économie appliquée.
    8. Cho-Min Lin & Kung-Cheng Lin, 2007. "The demand for lottery expenditure in Taiwan: a quantile regression approach," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(42), pages 1-11.
    9. David Giacopassi & Mark W. Nichols & B. Grant Stitt, 2006. "Voting for a Lottery," Public Finance Review, , vol. 34(1), pages 80-100, January.
    10. Andrew C. Worthington, 2001. "Implicit Finance in Gambling Expenditures: Australian Evidence on Socioeconomic and Demographic Tax Incidence," Public Finance Review, , vol. 29(4), pages 326-342, July.
    11. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2007:i:42:p:1-11 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Kent Grote & Victor Matheson, 2011. "The Economics of Lotteries: A Survey of the Literature," Working Papers 1109, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.
    13. Thomas A. Garrett & Russell S. Sobel, 2004. "State Lottery Revenue: The Importance of Game Characteristics," Public Finance Review, , vol. 32(3), pages 313-330, May.
    14. Silvia Magri, 2014. "Does issuing equity help R&D activity? Evidence from unlisted Italian high-tech manufacturing firms," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(8), pages 825-854, November.
    15. Tan, Andrew K. G. & Yen, Steven T. & Hasan, Abdul Rahman & Muhamed, Kamarudin, 2014. "Household Expenditures on Vegetables in Malaysia," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 46(4), pages 1-19, November.
    16. Harald Oberhofer & Michael Pfaffermayr, 2014. "Two-Part Models for Fractional Responses Defined as Ratios of Integers," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 2(3), pages 1-22, September.
    17. Jeremy Foltz & Bradford Barham & Jean-Paul Chavas & Kwansoo Kim, 2012. "Efficiency and technological change at US research universities," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 171-186, April.
    18. Zhiming Cheng & Russell Smyth & Gong Sun, 2013. "Participation and Expenditure of Rural-Urban Migrants in the Illegal Lottery in China," Monash Economics Working Papers 24-13, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    19. Marcel Fafchamps & Agnes R. Quisumbing, 1999. "Human Capital, Productivity, and Labor Allocation in Rural Pakistan," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 34(2), pages 369-406.
    20. Julia Bredtmann, 2014. "The Intra-household Division of Labor: An Empirical Analysis of Spousal Influences on Individual Time Allocation," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 28(1), pages 1-39, March.
    21. Jeong, Hanbat & Lee, Lung-fei, 2024. "Maximum likelihood estimation of a spatial autoregressive model for origin–destination flow variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 242(1).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ntj:journl:v:51:y:1998:i:1:p:71-82. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: The University of Chicago Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.ntanet.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.