Australians love to poke a pokie. Or so it seems judging by the $12 billion spent every year down the slots. This figure (which accounts for just over 50% of all gambling losses in Australia) is also a significant proportion of Australians’ entertainment budget, almost equalling the $14 billion spent every year on domestic holidays.

But who is dropping all the coins in the slots?

Gambling statistics are notoriously under-reported in surveys, presumably because of our socially undesirability bias (i.e.: we under report things which we think make us look bad, and over-estimate things which make us look good!). This makes demographic data about the people involved particularly hard to find.

(Side note: This bias is so strong that ABS ‘s Household expenditure statistics under-report gambling by a factor of 11; the HILDA (Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey) does better but still under-reports gambling by almost 300%, and pokies by a factor of almost 7.)

We do however, have information about where the money is spent. Assuming most pundits at the local pokies pub are locals, we can say that pokies are the game of choice (or addiction) of the poor and disadvantaged. Pokies expenditure per capita was 6 times higher in Melbourne’s poorest Local Government Areas than in the wealthiest ones. Income, Disadvantage indexes and Newstart payments (unemployment benefits) all correlate strongly with pokies losses.