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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

My concern is Why is the winner of the US lottery always in some out-of-the-place town in the middle of nowhere? The chances per-capita of the dart landing in a small town are microscopic, yet it happens all the time. Because its fixed. Somebody's relative.

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Small towns make up about 50% of the population in the US. Couple that with the fact that small towns also typically have lower income households which are more likely to buy lottery tickets, and you end up with basically every winner being in that demographic.

Small towns and rural make up only 21% of the US population.

http://www.ruralhome.org/storage/documents/ts2010/ts-report/...

Yeah, but all the mid-sized cities (and suburban towns) on the news that aren't in my area are indistinguishable from small towns in the middle of nowhere.

I think its up to 40% as of this year?

As someone who lives in a small rural town I highly doubt that. The percent has been consistently going down over time, not up and covid housing movement is nowhere near enough for that large a shift in one year.

Suburbs are significantly more people than small towns, and large metro areas in general hold vast majority of population.

Small town winner news stories resonate more with a wider audience so will feature much more than big city winners. People can also work out who won in a small community as opposed to a large metropolis so higher chance of nabbing a story there too. Being more newsworthy is not a representative selection when reporters are looking for the most rags-to-riches (Willy Wonka) heart-warming story.

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