Alcohol Excessive Consumption: Increasing Alcohol Taxes
Findings and Recommendations
The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) recommends increasing the unit price of alcohol by raising taxes to reduce excessive alcohol consumption and related harms. Public health effects are expected to be proportional to the size of the tax increase.
The full CPSTF Finding and Rationale Statement and supporting documents for Alcohol Excessive Consumption: Increasing Alcohol Taxes are available in The Community Guide Collection on CDC Stacks.
Intervention
Alcohol excise taxes affect the price of alcohol, and are intended to reduce alcohol-related harms, raise revenue, or both. Alcohol taxes are implemented at the state and federal level, and are beverage-specific (i.e., they differ for beer, wine, and spirits). These taxes are usually based on the amount of beverage purchased (not on the sales price), so their effects can erode over time due to inflation if they are not adjusted regularly.
About The Systematic Review
The CPSTF finding is based on evidence from a systematic review of 73 studies (search period through October 2007).
The review was conducted on behalf of the CPSTF by a team of specialists in systematic review methods, and in research, practice, and policy related to preventing excessive alcohol consumption.
Study Characteristics
- Most studies assessed total alcohol consumption at the societal level (i.e., per capita alcohol consumption). The design of these studies varied between countries.
- Most studies conducted outside of the United States used interrupted time series designs. Alcohol taxes in other countries tend to be set at the national level, and as such, it is generally not possible to do intra-country comparisons.
- In contrast, most of the U.S. studies used a panel study design, in which multiple states were assessed over time, allowing each to serve as a comparison for the others.
- The remaining studies assessed measures related to excessive drinking (e.g., the prevalence of underage or binge drinking) or alcohol-related harms, the most common being outcomes related to motor-vehicle crashes.
Summary of Results
The systematic review included 73 studies.
The studies looked at the relationship between either tax rates or total price and measures related to excessive alcohol consumption or its related harms.
The effects of prices on consumption or other outcomes are often expressed as “elasticities,” that are defined as the expected percentage change in the outcome when the price increases by 1%. For example, an alcohol price elasticity of -0.50 would mean that the outcome of interest (e.g., alcohol consumption) would be expected to decrease by 5% for every 10% increase in price.
Alcohol price and per capita consumption
- Price elasticity of alcohol consumption (i.e., the expected percentage change in alcohol consumption when the price increases by 1%)
- Beer consumption: -0.50 (18 studies)
- Wine consumption: -0.64 (22 studies)
- Spirits consumption: -0.79 (21 studies)
- Total alcohol (ethanol) consumption: -0.77 (11 studies)
- Price and consumption by high school or college age youth
- Six studies found consistent evidence that higher alcohol prices were associated with less youth drinking; three studies found mixed results (9 studies).
Alcohol price and alcohol-related harms
- Higher alcohol prices or taxes were consistently related to
- Fewer motor vehicle crashes and fatalities (10 of 11 studies)
- Less alcohol-impaired driving (3 of 3 studies)
- Less mortality from liver cirrhosis (5 of 5 studies)
- Less all-cause mortality (1 study)
- Effects also were demonstrated for measures of violence (3 studies), sexually transmitted diseases (1 study), and alcohol dependence (1 study).
Summary of Economic Evidence
The economic review included two studies that assessed the economic costs and benefits of alcohol tax intervention. All monetary values are reported in 2007 U.S. dollars.
- Cost-effectiveness was measured using disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), which express both time lost due to premature death and time spent disabled by disease or accidents.
- Alcohol tax of 20% of the pretax retail price offered net cost savings (one study)
- Intervention costs were $482,956 per 1 million people per year and the average cost-effectiveness ratio was approximately $395 per DALYs averted, a good value for money based on the per capita income of included countries (one study)
Applicability
The CPSTF finding should be applicable to high-income countries.
Evidence Gaps
- Do changes in alcohol prices differentially affect drinking behavior and health outcomes for important subgroups of the population, such as underage young people?
- What are the relative benefits of increasing taxes on all alcoholic beverages simultaneously, compared with selectively increasing taxes on specific beverage types? This research question should be considered in light of known differences in the beverage preferences of binge drinkers, historic changes in tax rates across beverage types, and the effect of inflation on real tax rates by beverage type.
- What is the impact of different approaches to taxing alcoholic beverages on excessive alcohol consumption and related harms? Specific emphasis should be placed on the impact of alcohol sales taxes, where taxes are calculated as a proportion of the total beverage price; the potential impact of standardizing alcohol taxes across beverage types based on alcohol content; and the potential impact of alcohol taxes levied by local governments on a per-drink basis in on-premise, retail alcohol outlets (i.e., tippler taxes).
Implementation Considerations and Resources
- Groups with less disposable income, such as underage drinkers, may be more sensitive to changes in alcohol prices than those with more disposable income.
- While raising alcohol taxes may provide an important source of revenue for governments, such tax increases may be resisted by some industry groups and consumers.
- Public support for higher alcohol taxes increases substantially when tax revenues are specifically directed to fund prevention and treatment programs instead of being used as an unrestricted source of general revenue.
Healthy People 2030 includes the following objectives related to this CPSTF recommendation.