Valizadeh Pourya, Ng Shu Wen
Agricultural and Food Policy Center and Department of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M University.
Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a faculty fellow at Carolina Population Center.
Am J Agric Econ. 2021 May;103(3):961-986. doi: 10.1111/ajae.12190. Epub 2021 Feb 2.
Sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxes have been proposed to discourage excessive sugar consumption, but it is unclear how high- vs. low-SSB purchasers respond to such taxes. We first examine heterogeneity in the purchase and financial effects of a national SSB tax across different types of households buying varying amounts of SSBs. We find high-SSB purchasers are less responsive to SSB price changes than low purchasers but make larger absolute reductions in SSB purchases in response to the tax, given their notably greater purchase levels prior to the tax. Nonetheless, the economic burden of the tax falls more heavily on high-SSB purchasers who are more likely comprised of lower-income households. We then investigate whether the income regressivity of the tax will be mitigated if low-income households are targeted by fruit and vegetable (FV) subsidies. We show that depending on the tax pass-through and subsidy rates, FV subsidies can fully offset high-SSB purchasers' tax burdens, and subsidy transfers are distributed relatively uniformly across the SSB purchase distribution of low-income households. Therefore, FV subsidy transfers would be financially more beneficial to low- and moderate-SSB purchasers because they bear smaller shares of the tax burden than high-SSB purchasers.
有人提议对含糖饮料(SSB)征税,以抑制过度的糖分摄入,但尚不清楚高含糖饮料购买者与低含糖饮料购买者对这类税收会作何反应。我们首先研究了一项全国性含糖饮料税在购买和财务影响方面的异质性,该税针对不同类型、购买不同数量含糖饮料的家庭。我们发现,高含糖饮料购买者对含糖饮料价格变化的反应不如低购买者敏感,但鉴于他们在征税前的购买量显著更高,因此他们因税收而导致的含糖饮料购买量的绝对减少幅度更大。尽管如此,税收的经济负担对高含糖饮料购买者的影响更为沉重,而这些购买者更可能是低收入家庭。然后,我们调查了如果对低收入家庭提供水果和蔬菜(FV)补贴,该税收的收入累退性是否会得到缓解。我们表明,根据税收转嫁率和补贴率,水果和蔬菜补贴可以完全抵消高含糖饮料购买者的税收负担,并且补贴转移在低收入家庭的含糖饮料购买分布中相对均匀地分配。因此,水果和蔬菜补贴转移在财务上对低和中等含糖饮料购买者更为有利,因为他们比高含糖饮料购买者承担的税收负担份额更小。