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Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (MIPAR)

Understanding Maryland gamblers

Maryland’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) has released Gambling Prevalence in Maryland: A Baseline Analysis, prepared by a team from MIPAR. The team was led by Dr. Judith Shinogle, along with Dr. Donald F. Norris (Public Policy) and Dr. DoHwan Park (Mathematics and Statistics).

The survey of gambling habits and pathological gambling behaviors found that although gambling is largely a positive activity for Marylanders, 3.4% of Maryland adults experience problem or pathological gambling. The baseline study, mandated by a 2007 law that authorized video lottery terminals, provides a snapshot of the State’s gambling behaviors prior to the implementation of slot machine gambling.

In “Who Pays for the Maryland Lottery? Evidence From Point of Sale Data” Dr. Robert Carpenter (Economics), Dr. Donald F. Norris (Public Policy) and Ph.D student Evan Perlman used innovative GIS mapping of lottery terminal and census track data to explore the relationship between race, income, and lottery sales. Their findings show “the voluntary tax collected by the Maryland lottery comes disproportionately from census tracts populated by African Americans and low-income residents,” specifically those “with less than a high-school education, and people age 65 and older.” The article appears in The Journal of Gambling Business and Economics, Vol. 4, No. 1 (31-52).