“In 1920 with the Christmas Lottery jackpot you could buy 24 houses”

Difficult access to housing and high prices are one of the most important problems facing society today, especially young people. Thus, prices have risen to such an extent that a Christmas jackpot It no longer works as much as it did 100 years ago.. This has been warned by the economist and finance specialist Santiago Niño Becerra, who has reflected on it.

“In current euros, the jackpot gave the right to buy two houses in Madrid. Two houses in Madrid, yes. But things got better, because In 1920, with the lottery jackpot, 24 houses could be bought. 24, huh? Be careful, always in constant euros, in current value,” the economist assured.

Thus, as he explained, the Lottery prizes began to have less and less “strength” starting in the 50s or 60s. “What happened, and I can imagine the reason, but I don’t know openly, from 1950-60, the lottery prizes, the jackpot prizes, basically began to decline. Why? Well, what I suppose is that, obviously, s“He wanted to reduce those prizes to have more profits by selling the numbers, of course.”

Nowadays, after winning the Lottery jackpot, what you get is 400.00 euros per tenth, which, however, actually becomes a much smaller amount since part of it goes to taxes. With this, the truth is that the remaining money is no longer enough to buy a home in the big capitals, as the economist points out: “You don’t buy a house now. No, somewhere you might. But the problem is not with the lottery, it is with Madrid, Bilbao, Barcelona, ​​Seville…”.

Despite all this, Niño Becerra assures that the Christmas Lotteryd still has something special: “The Christmas lottery has something that, due to the dates, is useful to share with friends. It has soul. At work, in companies, collective numbers are made. That is, it has something that unites.”

“In the United States there are bets, but there is nothing like our Christmas Lotterymuch less sharing a number between family. It’s something more individual,” Niño Becerra added about this aspect, highlighting that it is something very national and that it does not occur in other countries.

Therefore, due to the success that the Christmas Lottery registers year after year, it understands that prize values ​​have not changed: “If everything is sold, why are you going to increase the prizes?”