Numbers Gambling Among Blacks: A Financial Institution

Mainstream financial institutions have never been able to provide generally prevailing service levels in poor communities. In the resulting partial-service vacuum, blacks invented numbers gambling. Numbers-gambling banks became sources of capital and a major savings device of urban black communities. In conjunction with the usury industry, numbers banks framed an alternative institutional system for the savings-investment cycle in the slum. Numbers banking illustrates the conjoint contribution of institutional and cultural causes in analysis of poverty.