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Crowding-out effect of tobacco consumption in Serbia
  1. Marko Vladisavljevic,
  2. Jovan Zubović,
  3. Olivera Jovanovic,
  4. Mihailo Đukić
  1. Institute of Economic Sciences, Beograd, Serbia
  1. Correspondence to Dr Marko Vladisavljevic, Institute of Economic Sciences, Čika Ljubina 12, 11000 Beograd, Serbia; marko.vladisavljevic{at}ien.bg.ac.rs

Abstract

Background Although smoking prevalence and intensity in Serbia have decreased in recent years, expenditures on tobacco products still represent a significant portion of household budgets. As households have limited resources at their disposal, consuming tobacco means that they spend less on other items such as food, clothing, education and healthcare. This is particularly true for low-income households, for whom the pressure on the household budget is even higher.

Objectives In this research we estimate the effect of tobacco consumption on other consumption items in Serbia, which is the first estimation of this type for the countries in Eastern Europe.

Methods We use microdata from the Household Budget Survey and estimation approach that includes the combination of seemingly unrelated regression and instrumental variables. Besides estimating the overall effect we analyse the differences in effects between low-income, medium-income and high-income households.

Results Expenditures on tobacco reduce consumption on food, clothing and education and increase the budget shares spent on complementary consumption items such as alcohol, hotels, bars and restaurants. In most cases, the effects are more pronounced for low-income households than for other groups. These results suggest that aside from the negative effects of tobacco consumption on health, it also distorts household consumption structure, while affecting intrahousehold allocation and future health and development of other household members.

Conclusions The results from this research underline the negative effect that tobacco expenditures have on consumption of other products. The only way for households to decrease expenditures on tobacco is to stop smoking, as the consumption of those who continue smoking changes less than cigarettes prices. To ensure that households stop smoking and instead direct their expenditures towards more productive purposes, the Serbian government should adopt new policies and strengthen enforcement of existing tobacco control measures.

  • economics
  • low/middle income country
  • socioeconomic status
  • taxation

Data availability statement

Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available. Data were obtained from the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia upon signing a confidentiality agreement. Data may be obtained from the Statistical Office upon request.

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/tc-2022-057727

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    Data availability statement

    Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available. Data were obtained from the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia upon signing a confidentiality agreement. Data may be obtained from the Statistical Office upon request.

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    Footnotes

    • X @IEN_Beograd

    • Contributors MV: guarantor, conception and design of the work, analysis of data, drafting and revising the paper. JZ: project managment, data and funding acquisition. OJ: data acquisition. MĐ: drafting the paper.

    • Funding This research was funded by the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Institute for Health Research and Policy through its partnership with the Bloomberg Philanthropies (grant number: 16809). Authors’ research has been supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Serbia.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.