Other Public Sector Study
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Publication
The Welfare and Distributional Effects of Increasing Taxes on Tobacco in Vietnam
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06)This paper assesses the welfare and distributional effects of raising taxes on tobaccoin Vietnam. Tobacco taxes are recognized as effective policy tools to reduce tobaccoconsumption and to improve health outcomes. However, policy makers often hesitateto use them because of claims of their potentially regressive effects. According to thoseclaims, poorer households are particularly hurt by tobacco tax policies, as cigarettepurchases represent a larger share of their budgets relative to higher-income smokers.The paper argues that the claims on the regressive effects of tobacco tax policies arebased on naive, shortsighted, and incorrect estimations. Tobacco-related illnessesdamage health outcomes and the quality of the lives of smokers and their families, whilethey also cost billions of dollars in medical expenditures and losses in human capital andproductivity every year. Tobacco consumption imposes heavy economic burdens onhouseholds and governments, in addition to its well-known negative health and socialimpacts. Raising taxes on cigarettes dissuades consumption, hence improving healthoutcomes, adverting premature deaths, and reducing direct and indirect economic costs.The analysis applies the Extended Cost Benefit Analysis (ECBA) methodology to simulateempirically the costs, as well as the benefits of increasing the prices on cigarettes onthe welfare of Vietnamese households. Following a well-established body of literature,the ECBA acknowledges that there may be short-term direct negative effects of raisingprices on tobacco, as smokers can struggle to continue to purchase tobacco with theirunchanged household budgets. However, the model also incorporates two of the mainbenefits of reducing tobacco consumption by increasing taxes: (a) the reduction insmoking-related medical expenses borne by households and (b) the additional incomesthat households can earn by preventing years of productive life lost due to smoking attributablepremature deaths. A critical contribution of the ECBA is to incorporate decile-specific price elasticities of demand for cigarettes, to quantify the behavioral responses or sensitivity of smokers in different income groups to changes in cigarette prices. To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first available empirical exercise to estimate price elasticities by income decile in Vietnam. Consistent with the literature and with empirical findings in other countries, the price elasticities of demand for cigarettes are larger for lower-income households. Lower income smokers are likely to reduce their tobacco consumption more drastically, when faced with a price increase. The ultimate distributional effect on welfare of the increasein the price of cigarettes due to tax increases will then depend on assessing the potentialbenefits against the short-term costs. -
Publication
Gabon: Assessment of the Impact of Tobacco Excise Tax Increases on Price, Consumption and Tax Revenue over 2018-2021
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-04-25)This report presents the results of the assessment that simulates the fiscal revenue and consumption impact of proposed tobacco tax increases in Gabon in the period 2018–2021. -
Publication
Time to Quit: The Tobacco Tax Increase and Household Welfare in Bosnia and Herzegovina
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-01)This paper uses an extended cost-benefit analysis to estimate the distributional effect of tobacco tax increases in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The analysis considers the effect on household income of an increase in tobacco prices, changes in medical expenses, and the prolongation of working years under various scenarios, based on data in three waves of the national Household Budget Survey. One critical contribution is a quantification of the impacts by allowing price elasticities to vary across consumption deciles. The results indicate that a rise in tobacco prices generates positive income variations across the lowest income groups in the population (the bottom 20 percent). At the same time, tobacco price increases have negative income effects among middle-income and upper-income groups. These effects are larger, the higher the income level. If benefits through lower medical expenses and an expansion in working years are considered, the positive effect is acerbated among the lowest income groups. The middle of the distribution sees the income effect turn from negative to positive, and the top 40 percent, although continuing to experience a negative effect, see the magnitude of this effect diminish. Altogether, these effects mean that increases in tobacco prices have a pro-poor, progressive effect in Bosnia and Herzegovina. These results also hold within entities and across urban and rural areas. -
Publication
Reducing Tobacco Use Through Taxation in the Russian Federation: A Modelled Assessment of Two Policy Options
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-10-01)This report presents results of the modelling exercise in terms of excise tax increases for the period 2018–2021, including average excise tax and revenue mobilization options; it also compares the tobacco excise tax already included in the country's current tax code with that necessary to achieve proposed EU minimum rates by 2021 (Minimum EU excise tax rates scenario). -
Publication
The Distributional of Impacts of Cigarette Taxation in Bangladesh
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-06-01)Despite the obvious positive health impacts of tobacco taxation, an argument raised against it is that poor households bear the burden of the increased prices because of their higher share of spending on tobacco. This report includes estimates of the distributional impacts of price rises on cigarettes under various scenarios using the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2016/17. One contribution of this analysis is to quantify the impacts by allowing price elasticities to vary across consumption deciles. This shows that an increase in the price of cigarettes in Bangladesh has small consumption impacts and does not significantly change the poverty rate or consumption inequality. These findings stem from relatively even cigarette consumption patterns between less and more welloff households. These results hold even if one considers some small substitution through the use of bidis, which are largely consumed by the poor. The short-term consumption impacts are also negligible compared with the estimated gains because of savings in medical costs and the greater number of productive years of life. -
Publication
Advancing Action on the Implementation of Tobacco Tax Harmonization in the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-06)This study analyses the tax systems of five OECS countries (Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines). Taxes on tobacco, and therefore cigarette prices, vary widely across the five countries, and smuggling and tax evasion are genuine risks. The study assesses two possible harmonization scenarios, to estimate the possible impact of tobacco tax policy measures on tobacco use, and at the same time to expand the fiscal capacity of OECS governments through the mobilization of domestic resources. The simulations are modelled using the harmonization policies adopted at the OECS treaty of Basseterre. Comparisons are also made with other customs unions to identify regional best practices. -
Publication
Ethiopia: Modelling the Impact of Tobacco Tax Policy Reforms on Tobacco Use and Domestic Resources Mobilization Under Different Scenarios
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-01-23)As part of the ongoing tax policy dialogue with the Government of Ethiopia, the World BankGroup organized a workshop in Addis Ababa, on June 20, 2016, to discuss tobacco use, its healthimpact, and excise taxes on tobacco as a public policy measure to reduce tobacco use, and hencethe risk of ill health, premature mortality, and disability due to tobacco-related diseases, andmobilize additional domestic resources to expand the fiscal capacity of the government, inaccordance with the Financing for Development Addis Ababa Action Agenda. This event wasattended by officials from the Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Finance & EconomicCooperation (MoFEC). Ethiopia's Health Sector Transformation Plan 2015-2020 lists noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) as one of the major public health challenges facing the country. As in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, NCDs are expected to become the leading cause of ill health and death by 2030, influenced by rapid urbanization, rapid per capita economic growth, increase in behavioral risk factors (most NCDs are the result of tobacco use, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, and/or the harmful use of alcohol), and improvements in the control of infectious diseases that increase life expectancy. As NCDs have become a major health burden in the country, the Government has put in place ambitious targets to reduce the prevalence of the main health risk factors associated with the onset of NCDs among the population. The strategy focuses on increasing prevention and control of the main risk factors: tobacco use and alcohol abuse, physical inactivity and unhealthy diet, which contribute to about 80 percent of NCDs. -
Publication
Regressive or Progressive?: The Effect of Tobacco Taxes in Ukraine
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-09-27)Tobacco taxes are usually considered regressive as the poorest individuals allocate larger shares of their budget towards the purchase of tobacco related products. However, because these taxes also discourage tobacco use, some of the most adverse effects and their economic costs are reduced, including lower life expectancy at birth, higher medical expenses, increased years of disability among smokers, and the effects of secondhand smoke. This paper projects the effects of an increase in the tobacco tax on household welfare in Ukraine. It considers three price-elasticity scenarios among income deciles of the population. Results show that although tobacco taxes are often criticized for being regressive in the short-run, a more comprehensive scenario that includes medical expenses and working years, the benefits of tobacco taxes far exceed the increase in tax liability, benefitting in large measure lower income households. Our results also indicate that lower health expenditure seems to be the main driver because of the reduction in tobacco-related diseases that require expensive treatments. Tobacco taxes are also associated with positive distributional effects related to the higher long-term price elasticities of tobacco consumption.