How Gambling Can Deepen Poverty — World Health Organization
WHO connects gambling losses to essential household spending, unequal exposure and harms to people who never place a bet.
Gambling
The Lancet Public Health Commission on gambling — Wardle et al.
The field's definitive reframe: gambling harms are commercial and social determinants of health, not individual failings. Global consumer losses are projected to approach $700bn by 2028, and roughly 80 million adults already live with gambling disorder.
Gambling Away Stability: Sports Betting's Impact on Vulnerable Households — Baker, Balthrop, Johnson, Kotter & Pisciotta
Household transaction data across 230,171 US households and 26 state legalizations: online sports betting cut net investment deposits by about 14%, and the damage concentrated in households already living below median savings.
Gambling Harms and Deprivation — Public Health England
England's evidence review finds the lowest participation but the highest levels of harmful gambling among the most disadvantaged groups.
Click Here to Kill: the murder markets that preceded prediction markets — Brian Merchant
Jim Bell's 1996 'Assassination Politics' essay designed a market where you bet on when someone will die and collect by doing the killing. Brian Merchant reported on the dark-web sites that tried to build it — and on the people who died while law enforcement looked away.
State Lotteries and Consumer Behavior — Melissa Schettini Kearney
Lottery spending displaces other household consumption, with larger proportional reductions among low-income households.