Gambling is an activity where you wager something of value on a game of chance, in the hope that you will win. It can be done with money, or with items of value like cars or houses. Some people are very skilled at gambling, and make a living from it. Others are addicted to gambling, and it can ruin their lives and those of those around them.
The positive effects of gambling include socializing, mental development and skill improvement. While some people get hooked on gambling and spend their entire incomes, most gamble responsibly and can stop at any time. Gambling also provides revenue for governments, supporting important community initiatives. Several casinos and gambling operators have corporate social responsibility programmes, and donate a percentage of their profits to charitable organisations.
However, research on the impacts of gambling has been hampered by a lack of unified methodology for measuring the economic and social costs and benefits of this widespread activity. Moreover, many negative social impacts are non-monetary by nature, and are often ignored in calculations. A public health approach can offer a way to identify these invisible harms, by using disability weights for gambling (DWG) [32]. These are measures of the per-person burden of a state or trait on quality of life, and are similar to societal impact indicators (SI) used in econometric modelling. DWGs can be used to discover gambling harms that affect the gambler’s family and friends, as well as their own mental and physical health.