Health, Financial and Distributional Consequences of Tobacco Excise Tax in Lebanon
2016
This paper considers the financial and health effects, by socio-economic class, of increasing tobacco taxes in Lebanon, a middle-income country. Extended cost-effectiveness analysis (ECEA) methods are applied to quantify, across quintiles of socio-economic status, the health benefits gained, the additional tax revenues raised, and the net financial consequences for households from a 50% increase in the price of tobacco through excise taxes. The increase in tobacco tax is estimated to result in 65,000 premature deaths averted, 25% of them in the poorest quintile, $300M of additional tax revenues, 12% borne by the poorest quintile, $23M of out-of-pocket spending on healthcare averted, 36% of which accrue to the poorest quintile, 9% to the richest. These savings would be associated with 23,000 poverty cases averted (63% in the poorest quintile). Increasing tobacco taxes would lead to large financial and health benefits, and would be pro-poor in health gains, savings on healthcare, and poverty reduction.
Health, Financial and Distributional Consequences of Tobacco Excise Tax in Lebanon
Source:
Salti N, Brouwer E, Verguet S. The Health, Financial and Distributional Consequences of Increases in the Tobacco Excise Tax Among Smokers in Lebanon. Social Science & Medicine 2016; 170: 161-169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.10.020