WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans are significantly less likely than they were 10 years ago to say they participate in a variety of gambling activities. The sharpest drops are in the three most common activities: buying a state lottery ticket, gambling in person at a casino and participating in an office pool. Participation in less common forms of gambling, such as playing bingo for money or video poker, has also declined.
As a result, the percentage of U.S. adults who report doing any kind of gambling during the past year is 45%, down from 64% a decade ago and from similar proportions in 2003 and 2007 Gallup surveys.
The results are based on combined data from June and July Gallup polls that encompass telephone interviews with more than 2,200 U.S. adults.
These lower reported gambling rates coincide with a decline in the percentage of Americans who say that gambling is “morally acceptable,” from 67% in 2016 to a new low of 57% earlier this year.
Casino Gambling Peaked in 2003; State Lotteries in 1990s
Gallup first asked Americans whether they had participated in various gambling activities in 1989. It has asked about playing bingo for money as far back as 1950.
State lotteries have always been the most common way people gamble. Between 1989 and 1999, consistent majorities of U.S. adults said they had played a state lottery. That figure fell to the high-40% range between 2003 and 2016, before the sharper decline to 31% in the current survey.
When Gallup first asked about casino gambling in 1989, 20% said they had gambled in person at a casino. That figure grew to as high as 30% in 2003, as the number of legal casinos continued to expand in the U.S. The next two measures found that roughly one in four Americans had gambled at casinos, before dropping to 14% in the current survey.
The decline in in-person casino gambling could be a result of the rise of internet gambling. Though only 4% of U.S. adults say they gamble for money on the internet, it is the only form measured in the survey that has not shown a decline over time. Technology changes may also explain the drop in participation in office pools (from 15% in the early 2000s to 7% today), with more people working remotely than in the past, and in playing video poker games (from as high as 20% in 1999 to 5% today).
In contrast to most other gambling trends, betting on college and professional sports has been relatively flat since 2003. Still, fewer today say they bet on college and pro sports than did so in earlier Gallup measures from the late 1980s and 1990s.
Gambling Varies by Income, Gender, Age
Reports of gambling are down among all major subgroups of Americans compared with the 2016 survey. The declines among subgroups in participating in at least one form of gambling range from about 15 to 25 percentage points.
Upper-income Americans, those with an annual household income of $100,000 or more, are among the subgroups most likely to say they gamble, with 54% reporting they do so. This compares with 45% of middle-income adults (annual income of $50,000 to $99,999) and 40% of lower-income adults (annual income of less than $50,000).
Men (49%) are more likely than women (40%) to gamble, as are older adults (50% of those aged 50 and older) than younger adults (41% of those under age 50).
Gambling rates are similar among younger men (47%) and older men (51%), as well as older women (45%). Younger women, those aged 18 to 49, stand out as the age and gender group least likely to gamble (35%).
Reported Gambling Rates Are Higher in Online Surveys
The historical and current Gallup data are based on telephone interviews conducted by live interviewers. However, Gallup conducted a parallel web survey in June that asked the same gambling questions using the Gallup Panel, an online probability sample.
In that web survey, the percentages of U.S. adults who indicate they participate in each of the 13 different forms of gambling are slightly higher. As a result, the estimate of those who gambled in any form last year — 53% — is also higher than in the telephone survey.
Additional evidence of a mode effect in reports of gambling comes from a recent Pew Research Center web survey, which found that 22% of U.S. adults had gambled on sports in the past year. The comparable estimate from Gallup’s web survey — summarizing across the six gambling items in the Gallup web survey that pertain to sports — is nearly identical, at 21%. By contrast, the same sports gambling statistic computed using Gallup telephone survey responses is lower, at 15%.
These different results by mode may be due in part to phone survey respondents being reluctant to disclose to an interviewer that they participate in gambling activities. A web survey respondent entering their response into a computerized survey may not have the same concerns. If Americans today are less likely to see gambling as socially acceptable, then they may be less willing to admit to someone else that they gamble.
Demographic patterns are generally similar in both the web and phone surveys, although the web estimates are higher for each subgroup. The web survey also finds that overall gambling rates are higher among men (58%) than women (50%), among upper-income people (58%) than middle-income (52%) and lower-income people (49%), and among older adults (56% of those aged 50 and older) than younger adults (51% of those under age 50).
Problem Gambling Relatively Uncommon
The telephone survey finds that 3% of U.S. adults, and 7% of gamblers, say they “sometimes gamble more than [they] think [they] should.” Those results are similar to what Gallup has measured before.
Reports of gambling too much are also similar by demographic subgroup.
As might be expected, slightly more U.S. adults (6%) and U.S. gamblers (10%) admit to gambling too much when interviewed via the web than by phone.
A separate question in the telephone survey finds that 9% of U.S. adults say gambling has been a source of problems in their family. These rates have ticked up slightly compared with Gallup readings between 1989 and 1996, when 4% to 5% of adults said gambling had caused trouble for their family. Since then, the range has been 6% to 9%.
There are modest income differences in reports of gambling causing family problems, with 13% of lower-income Americans versus 7% to 8% of middle- and upper-income Americans saying this has occurred.
The web survey finds a similar estimate (8%) of gambling causing trouble in one’s family.
Bottom Line
Fewer Americans than a decade ago say they participate in a variety of gambling activities, with those declines generally seen across U.S. subgroups. Whether that decline represents a sharp turn away from gambling, reluctance from survey respondents to indicate they gamble, or both, is unclear. To the extent it indicates that Americans are less comfortable saying they gamble, it could be tied to lessening public acceptance of gambling or not wanting to appear to take risks with money when rising costs and affordability are major concerns.
But the fact that today’s web estimates are still below the estimates from past phone surveys lends some confidence to the finding that fewer Americans now gamble.
These reports of individual gambling activity may seem at odds with growth in the gambling industry, generally, as measured by gambling revenue in dollars. However, increased gambling revenue may result from a smaller pool of Americans gambling more frequently or paying higher prices to gamble than in the past. It could also reflect that gambling revenue may be easier to track now that gambling activity has shifted primarily to formal, government-sanctioned activities and away from informal means that may have been harder to measure.
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