A copy of the Boston Fed report can be found here: http://stoppredatorygambling.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Federal-Reserve-Bank-of-Boston-Study-2006.pdf
Casino gaming may not be for everyone yet more US states are expanding into it
Can
your state become the Las Vegas of _____? Odds are not. PSMag.com explains why.
Even
if other markets could emulate these successes, they came with a price. More
casinos also mean more problem gamblers, some research suggests, with all the
costly social ills that accompany them. There is very strong evidence that
proximity to casinos increases the incidence of problem gambling. University of
Las Vegas research in 1999 found that 6.6 percent of Clark County residents
admitted to having a gambling problem, which is far higher than anywhere else in
the country, while a fifth reported that a family member struggled with the
addiction. Suicide, divorce, bankruptcy, and crime rates are all unusually high,
as Sam Skolnik describes in his book, High Stakes: The Rising Cost of America’s
Gambling Addiction. The chapter on Vegas is subtitled “Problem Gambling Capital
of the World” and notes that a preeminent gambling researcher thinks the annual
social costs for Clark County could be up to $900 million.
In
any case, there is only one Las Vegas. As more and more states legalize various
forms of gaming, the market becomes more diffuse and more competitive. Notice
how Pennsylvania positioned most of its casinos near its borders to attract
out-of-state dollars, especially in the southeast, closest to Atlantic City. (In
2012, Pennsylvania’s annual gross casino revenue topped New Jersey’s for the
first time, while Atlantic City’s profits fell 35 percent in 2013.) Most casinos
do not attract very many tourists and certainly not the national conference
trade that Las Vegas enjoys. Simply
building hotels and putting on some concerts isn't going to turn, say,
Springfield into a comparable resort draw.
There
is a macroeconomic difference for local economies between
“destination gambling,” where tourists and conventioneers flock
to a glammed up locale, and “convenience gambling,” which
mostly caters to locals who won't be spending the night. A 2006 report from the Boston Federal
Reserve argues “whether a casino will benefit or harm a local economy
hinges on whether the casino is likely to attract tourists to the region. …
Casinos that cater to a local market may have no net ancillary economic
impacts.”
