SAMRC/Wits Centre for Health Economics and Decision Sciences - PRICELESS SA, School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
SAMRC/Wits Centre for Health Economics and Decision Sciences - PRICELESS SA, School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Soc Sci Med. 2019 Oct;238:112465. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112465. Epub 2019 Jul 31.
A growing number of jurisdictions are introducing taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) in efforts to reduce sugar intake, obesity, and associated metabolic conditions. A key dimension of the impact of such taxes is how they induce changes in the prices of the taxed beverages and their un-taxed substitutes. At present these taxes have typically been based solely on volume. More recently, however, due to the potential to target the source of SSBs' health harms and to incentivize product reformulation, SSB taxes are being levied based on sugar content. In April of 2018 South Africa implemented such a tax, the Health Promotion Levy (HPL), at a rate of 0.021 ZAR (approximately 0.15 US cents) for each gram of sugar over an initial threshold of 4 g/100 ml. Drawing on a dataset of price observations (N = 71, 677) collected in South Africa between January 2013 and March 2019, we study changes in beverage prices following the introduction of the HPL. We find null price increases among un-taxed beverages and find significant price increases for carbonates, the largest taxed product category. However, within carbonates we find similar increases in price for low- and high-sugar brands, despite the underlying difference in tax liability. In addition, while we find evidence of product reformulation, we find significant price increases among the brands that reduced their sugar content. While the findings are broadly consistent with the price changes of volume-based SSB taxes, future considerations of price effects of sugar-based SSB taxes need to account for the opportunity for intra-firm heterogeneity in price response among large multi-product firms.
越来越多的司法管辖区正在引入对含糖饮料（SSB）征税的措施，以减少糖的摄入、肥胖和相关的代谢性疾病。这类税收的影响有一个关键维度，即它们如何改变被征税饮料及其未征税替代品的价格。目前，这些税收通常仅基于数量。然而，最近由于有可能针对 SSB 对健康的危害的来源，并激励产品配方改革，SSB 税开始基于含糖量征收。2018 年 4 月，南非实施了一项税收，即健康促进税（HPL），对含糖量超过初始阈值 4g/100ml 的每克糖征收 0.021 南非兰特（约合 0.15 美分）的税率。利用 2013 年 1 月至 2019 年 3 月期间在南非收集的价格观测数据集（N=71677），我们研究了 HPL 实施后饮料价格的变化。我们发现未征税饮料的价格没有上涨，而碳酸饮料的价格则显著上涨，碳酸饮料是最大的征税产品类别。然而，在碳酸饮料中，我们发现低糖和高糖品牌的价格涨幅相似，尽管税收责任存在差异。此外，虽然我们发现了产品配方改革的证据，但我们发现降低糖含量的品牌价格涨幅显著。尽管这些发现与基于数量的 SSB 税的价格变化基本一致，但未来考虑基于含糖量的 SSB 税的价格影响时，需要考虑大型多产品公司内部的价格反应异质性的机会。
