Abstract. In this paper, we give sharp upper and lower bounds for the number of degenerate monic (and arbitrary, not necessarily monic) polynomials with integer coefficients of fixed degree n ≥ 2 and height bounded by H ≥ 2. The polynomial is called degenerate if it has two distinct roots whose quotient is a root of unity. In particular, our bounds imply that non-degenerate linear recurrence sequences can be generated randomly.