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          2010 Annual Meeting, July 25-27, 2010, Denver, Colorado >

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://purl.umn.edu/61167

Title: The Effects of a Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax: Consumption, Calorie Intake, Obesity, and Tax Burden by Income
Authors: Lin, Biing-Hwan
Smith, Travis A.
Lee, Jonq-Ying
Authors (Email): Lin, Biing-Hwan (blin@ers.usda.gov)
Smith, Travis A (tsmith@ers.usda.gov)
Lee, Jonq-Ying (jonqying@ufl.edu)
Keywords: beverage demand
sugar-sweetened beverage tax
soda tax
obesity
tax revenue
JEL Codes: C34
D12
Q18
Issue Date: 2010-07-27
Series/Report no.: Selected Paper
10323
Abstract: Taxing sugar-sweetened beverages has been proposed as a means to reduce calorie intake, improve diet and health, and generate revenue that governments can use to address the obesity-caused health and economic burden. Two beverage demand systems were estimated using beverage purchase data for high-income and low-income households. Using the estimated demand elasticities we examined the impacts of a hypothetical 20-percent effective tax rate (or about 0.5 cent per ounce) on beverage consumption, calorie intake, tax revenue and burden. Our results suggest that such a tax would induce an average reduction of 35 and 41 calories a day among adults and children, respectively. The tax burden is found to be regressive, although representing less than one percent of household spending on food and beverages. Tax revenue is estimated to be $5.8 billion using 2007 population estimates.
URI: http://purl.umn.edu/61167
Institution/Association: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association>2010 Annual Meeting, July 25-27, 2010, Denver, Colorado
Total Pages: 26
Collections:2010 Annual Meeting, July 25-27, 2010, Denver, Colorado

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