postcode lottery
/ˌpoʊs(t)ˌkoʊd ˈlɑtɚi/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.96 in modern English
23
Scrabble Score
15
Letters
4
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The unequal availability or quality of services, especially public services such as healthcare or education, in different parts of the country.
British usage
Example Sentences
- "There is a National Institute for Clinical Excellence which is working its way through examining drugs and treatments and dictating what treatment and drugs should be used across the country to prevent the postcode lottery of previous years."
- "The Audit Commission has described the situation facing householders as a ‘postcode lottery’ but there is a discernible trend. You are more likely to receive poorer environmental services living in an urban authority than you are living in a shire district."
- "People were angry about the postcode lottery in the NHS [National Health Service], or that this school is better than that school and I can't get into the good school. Of all inequalities, these things make people far angrier than anything else, even angrier than financial inequalities."
- "Yet, at the start of the twenty-first century, access to health care is not equitable; ‘postcode’ lotteries exist; and certain groups are favoured over others, who are equally deserving but who live in an inner-city area, are unemployed or do not have English as a first language, with the result that they cannot claim the services that were intended precisely for them."
- "A Briton's chance of finding a good school, or effective treatment for a medical condition, or any kind of NHS dentist, may depend on the ‘postcode lottery’. Thus not just the management of the economy but specific policies on public services create winners and losers[…]."
- "[T]he developing argument is that localism requires postcode lotteries; this is something that politicians need to become accustomed to if the local variations result from decisions at the local level by empowered citizens. However, there is some evidence which suggests that the public remain in favour of the equity argument over postcode lotteries."
Etymology
From postcode (“a sequence of letters and numbers added to a postal address to aid the sorting and delivery of post or mail; a region denoted by a postcode”) + lottery (“something decided by chance”), referring to the fact that whether one is in a locality which receives adequate services is a matter of chance.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˌpoʊs(t)ˌkoʊd ˈlɑtɚi/
- British English: /ˌpəʊs(t)kəʊd ˈlɒtəɹi/
Usage
- British usage