Because tickets cost the same for everyone, low-income people on average spend a higher proportion of their income on the lottery than high-income people, said Celeste Carruthers, an associate professor of business and economics at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville who has studied the Texas lottery. In their research about the Georgia lottery, Georgia State University professors Ross Rubenstein and David C. Ribar found that low-income families were far less likely to benefit from the education lottery than high-income families. “What we were testing was whether or not rebranding the lottery as the ‘education lottery’ would induce some altruistic feelings among higher-income areas and increase their proportionate contribution to lottery tickets and instant games,” Carruthers said.