What Amount of Lottery Winnings Goes Unclaimed Each Year?

Around $800 million US Dollars (USD) of lottery winnings goes unclaimed each year, or around a total of 2% of all winnings, according to 2013 findings. Often winnings are unclaimed in the instance of when participants’ numbers did not fully match the big jackpot but were partial matches for lesser prizes. Unclaimed lottery winnings will typically be returned to the state in which the ticket was purchased. The first modern lotteries, a form of legalized gambling in which states use random drawings or other selections to raise revenue, began in 1964 in New Hampshire, and operate in 37 states.

More about the lottery:

• The average lottery jackpot winner spends all of his or her winnings within five years.
• A person is 50 times less likely to win the lottery than be struck by lightning and 20,000 times less likely than being killed in a vehicle accident.
• Lotteries in the US were historically first ran by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agents in an attempt to keep the practice as fair and trustworthy as possible.