A man walks into a financial consultant’s office and asks, “What’s the fastest way to become a millionaire?” The consultant replies, “Buy a lottery ticket.”
While this might be a joke in the finance world, it also reflects something of the reason behind the popularity of the lottery in Taiwan. On average, 32 Taiwanese strike the jackpot in the lottery each year, and whenever there’s a rollover, lottery stores across the island blow up in popularity as everyone goes chasing their champagne wishes and caviar dreams.
But off in the dark corners of society, the dreams of many hinge on those tickets otherwise deemed losers.
As the lunar year winds up and a mass of cold air covers the island, 81-year-old Mr. Zhang, living alone, worries about the coming Chinese New Year. He may be cold, and he may be poor, but worse still is the prospect of being alone while others celebrate the New Year’s festivities.
But just as Mr. Zhang is wallowing in sadness, the doorbell rings—a volunteer from the Home Services Program has come to visit and invite him to a reunion dinner on New Year’s Eve.
The Home Services Program is built around a website created by the Federation for the Welfare of the Elderly. The site brings together homecare resources from around Taiwan, and since its establishment in 2010, it has helped thousands of elderly people. Behind the scenes, the program relies not only on ordinary donations, but also on money provided by Taiwan Lottery’s “public welfare lottery.”
“For every NT$100 spent on lottery tickets in Taiwan,” says Taiwan Lottery Co. chairman Steve Hsieh, “NT$26.75 is used for the public good.” Since the public welfare lottery began in 1999, over NT$280 billion of lottery profits have been donated, making the lottery one of Taiwan’s main contributors to social welfare efforts.
The Taiwan Lottery Company recently donated 100 rehabilitation buses to city and county governments around Taiwan, using donations from lottery winners to provide services to the handicapped and the elderly.
Social welfare efforts require tremendous amounts of funding, and so, faced with their own limited budgets, many developed countries have turned to lotteries as a complement.
The contributions to the public good by Taiwan’s lottery come in two types. The first is the money that the bank that wins the franchise to operate the lottery undertakes to pay, regardless of whether or not the lottery itself is profitable for them. For the fourth franchise period, covering 2014 through 2023, the winning tender was submitted by CTBC Bank, who put up NT$2.7 billion a year. This money will be divided among the Ministry of Finance, the Council of Indigenous Peoples, the Council of Labor Affairs, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare in accordance with regulations and in proportions decided by a panel of experts.
The Social and Family Affairs Administration, part of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, is a major recipient of this lottery funding. In 2013, the administration received NT$1.2 billion in grants to help with their work providing care for the elderly, medical services in remote areas and to underprivileged communities, assistance to disabled aspiring entrepreneurs, and counseling to teens.
The Council of Labor Affairs, meanwhile, uses the money it receives to fund the Diversity in Employment Project and job training programs, helping single parents, disabled people, and the long-term unemployed to re-enter society as productive members.
For example, with lottery funding from the Council of Labor Affairs, the Yu-Cheng Social Welfare Foundation set up Organic Yam stores in Yonghe and at the intersection of Zhongxiao E. Road and Jianguo S. Road in Taipei in 2013. These outlets, which sell bread, fruit, and other organic foods, provide employment for 30 people with physical or mental disabilities.
Each lottery ticket purchased provides hope not only to the buyer, but also to the underprivileged, even if it isn’t a winner.
The other form of welfare funding from the lottery comes from its profits. The better tickets sell, the more goes to good causes.
Look at 2012: the lottery’s profits for that year totaled NT$27.2 billion, with 5% of that going to the National Health Insurance program, 45% to the National Pension Insurance Fund, and 50% to local governments to distribute to civic groups as grants. In other words, Taiwan’s various local governments received some NT$13.6 billion to help their communities.
Beyond being tagged for use for the public good, there are no restrictions on how the profits from the public welfare lottery can be used. For example, in February 2013 the Taoyuan County Government distributed some NT$50 million in rent support payments to over 1200 low-income, Aboriginal, or disabled households having trouble making ends meet in tough economic times.
And to get help to more remote areas, local governments also channel lottery money through social welfare organizations.
The Garden of Hope Foundation, for example, has used these funds to provide long-term support and care to pregnant minors, offering counseling and comfort to young women under severe physical and emotional stress.
The foundation also provides support to victims of domestic violence, helping them get back on their feet.
In cases of domestic violence, it’s not only the direct victims of physical violence that suffer, but also others living under the same roof. Victims can suffer psychological harm as well, which can lead to aberrant behavior and perpetuate the cycle of abuse.
Good Shepherd Social Welfare Services use the funds they receive to employ professional social workers who can provide individual or group counseling for these victims. They particularly work in coordination with schools and kindergartens to provide child victims with a sense of family and a way to step out of the darkness of their experience and into the light.
“A lot of the children just want a good sleep,” says Yang Yahua, director of Good Shepherd. Many child victims have trouble sleeping, always afraid of hearing one parent beating the other, and will only feel safe enough to sleep once the abusive parent is asleep. Just being able to peacefully eat and sleep together with the abused parent is the greatest wish of these children.
Most of the grants given to such social welfare organizations from lottery profits are used on personnel expenses, as following up on cases requires a significant amount of manpower. This is especially the case with child victims of domestic violence, as many of them keep what happened locked down tight inside and will only develop the courage to talk about it after being accompanied by a social worker for an extended period of time.
With the help of funding from the public welfare lottery, Yu-Cheng Social Welfare Foundation has been able to set up organic food stores, creating job opportunities for physically and mentally handicapped people.
The lottery provides more than just funding, however. Selling lottery tickets and scratchcards also provides more direct assistance in the form of the opportunity to work.
Lottery ticket retail stores are entitled to an 8% commission on ticket sales. According to the National Treasury Administration, such stores earned an average commission in 2012 of NT$93,000 per month, providing a stable income even after utilities and rent, and offering a way ahead for those who feel like they have lost all hope.
One example is 37-year-old Lien Chia-lu of Pingtung. At age one, Lien had trouble walking, and by the time he was ten, his condition had deteriorated to the point where he couldn’t walk at all. He visited doctor after doctor, none of whom could help. It wasn’t until he reached junior high school that he finally discovered he was suffering from muscular dystrophy.
Even as he began to lose the use of his arms and legs, Lien continued to pursue his love of computer graphics as a graphic design major. After graduation, he and some friends opened an advertising firm in Changhua, and after marrying he moved to Kaohsiung to start Blue Whale Printing and Advertising Design, the realization of a dream.
With his divorce from his wife, though, Lien was left looking after their two children, which meant he could no longer go out on business or to meet clients. Only able to do his work with his right hand, his income was limited, and his physical condition had worsened to the point where he needed an in-home carer. Lien was in dire straits.
Then in 2007, with the help of a friend, Lien applied to start his own lottery ticket store. Using the front half of his store for lottery ticket sales and the back half as a studio, Lien has managed to eke out a living for himself and his children while continuing to follow his passion for advertising design.
“I feel blessed to have encountered so many helpful people along the way,” says Lien, who adds that his one and only concern at the moment is making sure his sons grow up well.
Taiwan is the only country in the world that allows only indigenous people, people with disabilities, or low-income single parents to sell lottery tickets. Even then, though, starting up a lottery ticket store is far from easy.
For the current lottery franchise period, if you want to start a store you not only have to pass a background check, but also be lucky enough to be one of the 8,700 people of the 60,000-plus applicants to have their number drawn in a public drawing. Even then, there are interviews, training, and a basic skills test to pass before you finally qualify to run a store.
Room to growAlthough the public welfare lottery has created over 40,000 jobs since its creation, there are still many problems to be addressed.
First, while stores are restricted to the underprivileged, there have been several cases of people using stand-ins or of otherwise unqualified applicants trying to get a piece of the lottery cake. To bring a stop to this, the government needs to add more rigorous checks on applicants.
A second issue is the controversy over how lottery profits are used. In October 2013, a Taipei City councilor asked why some 5,000-plus low-income families weren’t able to receive assistance to cover living expenses despite the Taipei City Government being in possession of several billion in lottery profits, stating that this was contrary to the spirit of charity behind the lottery. The city government responded that the relevant legislation does not allow lottery funds to be used for purposes for which a local government has already allocated a budget from its own resources, and that the government must act in accordance the law. In light of this, finding ways to assist low-income families in ways they need must be a priority.
To address the issue of deception in applications for stores, the Ministry of Finance has begun beefing up their checks, already uncovering several cases and voiding their applications. Starting in 2014, new applicants are required to post a NT$50,000 deposit (from which low-income households are exempt), and are only allowed to run stores in the same area as their household registration.
As for the problem of local governments’ inability to make effective use of the lottery profits, National Treasury Administration deputy director-general Xiao Jiaqi has stated that from 2014 the profits will no longer be distributed according to population or sales figures, but rather by the number of applications for assistance in each area and by how effectively local governments can make funds available for people in need.
Sharing dreams, sharing loveWhile the public welfare lottery has led to many people realizing their dreams of riches, it is worth noting that many of these winners’ first thoughts are that if the gods were kind enough to bless them with this money, they should share their good fortune with others.
According to the Taiwan Lottery Company, in the past seven years jackpot winners have donated over NT$2.8 billion to charity, with some even giving millions directly to the store from which they purchased their winning ticket. One particularly notable recent case saw a baseball-loving lottery winner donate NT$120 million to fund the running of the national little league baseball championships in Hualien for the next 20 years, hoping to encourage young baseball lovers.
Every ticket bought is a little beacon of hope, and as those beacons come together, they form a brilliant beam, bringing light to those who live in dark situations and helping everyone realize their dreams.
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