Impact of Taxing Sugar-Sweetened Beverages in South Africa: An ECEA
2019
In this paper, the authors conducted an extended cost-effectiveness analysis of a newly imposed tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) in South Africa. They estimated the averted premature deaths related to type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), financial benefits to households, increased government tax revenues, and healthcare savings for the government, across various income quintiles.
The authors found that a 10% SSB tax increase would avert an estimated 8,000 T2DM-related premature deaths over 20 years, with most deaths averted among the third and fourth income quintiles. The bottom two quintiles would face the smallest tax burden increase and have the lowest savings in out-of-pocket payments, primarily due to subsidies from government provided healthcare. Additionally, they estimated that 32,000 T2DM-related cases of catastrophic expenditures and 12,000 cases of poverty would be averted over the 20-year time frame.
Impact of Taxing Sugar-Sweetened Beverages in South Africa: An ECEA
Source:
Saxena A, Stacey N, Puech PDR, Mudara C, Hofman K, Verguet S. The Distributional Impact of Taxing Sugar-Sweetened Beverages: Findings from an Extended Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in South Africa. BMJ Global Health 2019; 4 (4): e001317. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2018-001317