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Income-related inequality in gambling: evidence from Italy

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Abstract

In this paper we document the income-related inequality in gambling. We employ a novel database from 2014–2017 waves of the Italian Population Survey on Alcohol and other Drugs (IPSAD) which also include information on the preferences for games of chance. Following the Erryegers Index, our findings suggest that traditional lotteries are concentrated among the richest individuals, while betting and new generation games tend to be pro-poor games. The decomposition of income-related inequalities reveals that pro-rich inequality observed in traditional games is mainly driven by gender, age, and working condition. Higher components of the pro-poor inequality observed in betting and new generation games come instead from income and age. Since the pro-poor games are also the major contributors of the growth in gambling turnover and the increase in gambling disorders, our results indicate that a relevant part of increasing social costs associated to gambling are more likely to be paid by the less-well off, and potentially most vulnerable members of the society.

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Notes

  1. https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/notizie/2017-09-21/cronologia-liberalizzazione-gioco-tappe-principali-170952.shtml?uuid=AE6ztQXC.

  2. Developed in 2001 by Ferris and Wynne, the CPGI screening test was validated in its Italian version by Colasante et al. (2013) and it is used in the IPSAD survey to assess the prevalence of problematical gambling behavior in the general population.

  3. LEA is a list of health care services that the central government requires to be guaranteed in all Italian Regions.

  4. The gross gambling turnover refers to the actual amount gambled by participants with gambling operators.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Vincenzo Carrieri, Owen O’Donnell, Paul Makdissi and Paolo Liberati for their useful suggestions. Furthermore, the authors are in debt with the participants of the Winter School 2019, HEALTH, OPPORTUNITIES AND REDISTRIBUTION held at Canazei 6–10 January 2019.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Clinical Physiology (IFC), Italian National Research Council (CNR), Rome, Italy

    Giuliano Resce, Elisa Benedetti & Sabrina Molinaro

  2. Department of Economics and Finance, Università di Bari “A.Moro”, Bari, Italy

    Raffaele Lagravinese

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  1. Giuliano Resce
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Correspondence to Sabrina Molinaro.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table A8 Income-related inequality by type of game for frequent gamblers* (2014, 2017)
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Table A9 Income-related inequality by type of game (2014, 2017) using the six classes of income in IPSAD (income not matched)
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Table A10 Income-related inequality by type of game (2014, 2017)
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Table A11 Regression results (probit model—2014)
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Table A12 Regression results (probit model—2017)
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Resce, G., Lagravinese, R., Benedetti, E. et al. Income-related inequality in gambling: evidence from Italy. Rev Econ Household 17, 1107–1131 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-019-09468-9

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