Do Taxes for Soda and Sugary Drinks Work? Scanner Data Evidence from Berkeley and Washington

The impact of sugar‐sweetened beverage taxes on purchases: Evidence from four city‐level taxes in the United States

“…Cook County, Illinois, briefly imposed a tax on SSBs in 2017, but it was repealed after a few months. (Bollinger & Sexton, 2018;Cawley & Frisvold, 2017;Falbe, Rojas, Grummon, & Madsen, 2015;Rojas & Wang, 2017) to full pass-through in Philadelphia, PA (Cawley et al, 2020a;Roberto et al, 2019;Seiler, Tuchman, & Yao, 2019).…”

“…For Philadelphia, , Seiler et al (2019), and Roberto et al (2019) find that the tax leads to reductions in purchases of taxed beverages within Philadelphia but increases in purchases of those beverages outside of Philadelphia. For Berkeley, Rojas and Wang (2017) and Bollinger and Sexton (2018) find limited evidence that the tax reduced the sales volume of SSBs in national chain retailers. For Oakland, Cawley, Frisvold, Hill, and Jones (2020b) find that the tax resulted in a slight decrease in the volume of SSBs purchased in Oakland.…”

“…San Francisco and Seattle implemented a tax on SSBs on January 1, 2018, of 1 cent per ounce and 1.75 cents per ounce, respectively. 3 Rojas and Wang (2017) examined the SSB tax in Berkeley and the state-level tax in Washington on carbonated beverages separately. Fletcher, Frisvold, and Tefft (2010a, 2010b examined multiple state-level taxes on soda, but their analysis predates the larger SSB taxes in the United States.…”

Obesity and Self Control: Evidence from Food Purchase Data

“…Some studies (Falbe et al, 2015;Cawley and Frisvold, 2017;and Silver et al, 2017) show that despite limited pass-through of the tax onto the products, consumption shows both statistically significant and economically meaningful decreases. Others (Rojas and Wang, 2017) find limited evidence of any actual consumption change. Our empirical findings suggest that an alternative avenue for such taxes could be to target unhealthy foods, rather than carbonated drinks.…”

What's on the Menu? Policies to Reduce Young People's Sugar Consumption

“…For instance, in a study comparing the Berkeley soda tax with a smaller levy in the state of Washington, Rojas and Wang () find the former was under‐shifted and the latter was over‐shifted. Grogger () finds evidence of over‐shifting of the Mexican soda tax, whereas evidence from the tax in Philadelphia points towards close to complete pass‐through (Seiler, Tuchman and Yao, ; Cawley et al., ).…”