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The effects of tobacco taxation and pricing on the prevalence of smoking in Africa

BACKGROUND: Tobacco use continues to kill millions of people globally, making it one of the major causes of preventable deaths. Notwithstanding, there has been a very marginal fall in the prevalence of tobacco smoking in Africa. Since taxes (hence prices) are part of the main measures suggested to d...

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Autores principales: Immurana, Mustapha, Boachie, Micheal Kofi, Iddrisu, Abdul-Aziz
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8082915/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33926580
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41256-021-00197-0
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author Immurana, Mustapha
Boachie, Micheal Kofi
Iddrisu, Abdul-Aziz
author_facet Immurana, Mustapha
Boachie, Micheal Kofi
Iddrisu, Abdul-Aziz
author_sort Immurana, Mustapha
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Tobacco use continues to kill millions of people globally, making it one of the major causes of preventable deaths. Notwithstanding, there has been a very marginal fall in the prevalence of tobacco smoking in Africa. Since taxes (hence prices) are part of the main measures suggested to decrease the demand for tobacco products, this study investigates how tobacco taxation and pricing influence the prevalence of smoking in 24 African countries. METHODS: Using panel data on 24 African countries sourced from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank databases for the period 2010 to 2016, this study employs the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator to investigate the effects of tobacco taxation and pricing on the prevalence of smoking. The system GMM estimator is used due its ability to deal with potential endogeneity of tobacco taxation and pricing: the likelihood that the prevalence of smoking can influence tobacco taxation and pricing which may lead to biased estimates. RESULTS: Tobacco taxation and pricing have negative significant effects on the prevalence of smoking among the selected countries after controlling for growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, urbanization, death rate and net inflows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Specifically, a percentage increase in tobacco price is found to decrease the prevalence of smoking by between 0.11 to 0.14%, while a percentage increase in tobacco tax decreases the prevalence of smoking by between 0.25 to 0.36%, all at 1% level of significance. CONCLUSION: Since tobacco taxation and pricing are found to have negative significant effects on the prevalence of smoking, the implication is that, their use can be intensified by African policy makers towards achieving the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) recommended targets and hence decrease the prevalence of tobacco smoking in Africa. Doing so may therefore help in achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3.5 (prevention and treatment of substance abuse), thereby reducing the colossal number of smoking attributable deaths.
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spelling pubmed-80829152021-04-29 The effects of tobacco taxation and pricing on the prevalence of smoking in Africa Immurana, Mustapha Boachie, Micheal Kofi Iddrisu, Abdul-Aziz Glob Health Res Policy Research BACKGROUND: Tobacco use continues to kill millions of people globally, making it one of the major causes of preventable deaths. Notwithstanding, there has been a very marginal fall in the prevalence of tobacco smoking in Africa. Since taxes (hence prices) are part of the main measures suggested to decrease the demand for tobacco products, this study investigates how tobacco taxation and pricing influence the prevalence of smoking in 24 African countries. METHODS: Using panel data on 24 African countries sourced from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank databases for the period 2010 to 2016, this study employs the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator to investigate the effects of tobacco taxation and pricing on the prevalence of smoking. The system GMM estimator is used due its ability to deal with potential endogeneity of tobacco taxation and pricing: the likelihood that the prevalence of smoking can influence tobacco taxation and pricing which may lead to biased estimates. RESULTS: Tobacco taxation and pricing have negative significant effects on the prevalence of smoking among the selected countries after controlling for growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, urbanization, death rate and net inflows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Specifically, a percentage increase in tobacco price is found to decrease the prevalence of smoking by between 0.11 to 0.14%, while a percentage increase in tobacco tax decreases the prevalence of smoking by between 0.25 to 0.36%, all at 1% level of significance. CONCLUSION: Since tobacco taxation and pricing are found to have negative significant effects on the prevalence of smoking, the implication is that, their use can be intensified by African policy makers towards achieving the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) recommended targets and hence decrease the prevalence of tobacco smoking in Africa. Doing so may therefore help in achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3.5 (prevention and treatment of substance abuse), thereby reducing the colossal number of smoking attributable deaths. BioMed Central 2021-04-29 /pmc/articles/PMC8082915/ /pubmed/33926580 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41256-021-00197-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Research
Immurana, Mustapha
Boachie, Micheal Kofi
Iddrisu, Abdul-Aziz
The effects of tobacco taxation and pricing on the prevalence of smoking in Africa
title The effects of tobacco taxation and pricing on the prevalence of smoking in Africa
title_full The effects of tobacco taxation and pricing on the prevalence of smoking in Africa
title_fullStr The effects of tobacco taxation and pricing on the prevalence of smoking in Africa
title_full_unstemmed The effects of tobacco taxation and pricing on the prevalence of smoking in Africa
title_short The effects of tobacco taxation and pricing on the prevalence of smoking in Africa
title_sort effects of tobacco taxation and pricing on the prevalence of smoking in africa
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8082915/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33926580
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41256-021-00197-0
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