Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Evaluating South Africa's tobacco control policy using a synthetic control method
  1. Grieve Chelwa1,2,
  2. Corné van Walbeek2,3,
  3. Evan Blecher2,3,4
  1. 1 Center for African Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
  2. 2 Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
  3. 3 School of Economics, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
  4. 4 Department of Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland
  1. Correspondence to Dr Grieve Chelwa, Center for African Studies, Harvard University, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; grieve_chelwa{at}fas.harvard.edu

Abstract

Background South Africa has since 1994 consistently increased the excise tax on cigarettes to maintain a total tax burden of 50% (1997–2003) and 52% (after 2004) of the average retail selling price. Between 1994 and 2004, the real (inflation-adjusted) excise tax increased by 249%, and the average real retail price of cigarettes increased by 110%. In addition, advertising and smoking bans were implemented in 2001. These measures, which we collectively refer to as tax-led, coincided with a 46% decrease in per capita consumption of cigarettes. No evaluation of South Africa's tobacco control policies has created a counterfactual of what would have happened if the tax-led measures had not occurred.

Objective (1) To create a credible counterfactual of what would have happened to per capita cigarette consumption if the tax-led measures had not happened. (2) To use this counterfactual to estimate their impact on cigarette consumption in South Africa.

Method We use a synthetic control method to create a synthetic South Africa, as a weighted average of countries (the ‘donor pool’) that are similar to South Africa, but that did not engage in large-scale tobacco control measures between 1990 and 2004.

Results Per capita cigarette consumption would not have continued declining in the absence of the tax-led measures that began in 1994. By 2004, per capita cigarette consumption was 36% lower than it would have been in the absence of the tax-led measures. These results, which we mostly attribute to tax increases, are robust to different specifications of the ‘donor pool’.

Conclusions Significant public health dividends can be obtained by consistently increasing the real tax on cigarettes.

  • Economics
  • Taxation
  • Low/Middle income country
  • Price
  • Public policy

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.