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U.S. sweeteners: Combating excess consumption with an excise tax?

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  • Prithviraj Lakkakula
  • Andrew Schmitz

Abstract

Obesity is a public health problem in the United States that has been linked to excess sweetener consumption. The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends no more than 6–9 teaspoons/capita/day, while the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends 200 calories/capita/day of caloric sweetener consumption. Both recommendations are well below the reported 2016 sweetener consumption levels. We quantify the input tax rates needed to reduce the current excess sweetener consumption level to the AHA and FDA recommended standards. We calculate the joint tax in the United States on two major sweeteners, sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), to be 31 and 24 cents per pound, respectively, based on the AHA standard, and 19 and 17 cents per pound, respectively, using the FDA standard. These taxes would be roughly the magnitude of the existing sugar and HFCS prices. In both cases, the tax incidence on producers is much smaller than on consumers. Our focus is very different from past studies in that it deals with the effect of taxes on inputs to meet the recommended target rather than a selective tax (sugar‐sweetened beverage tax). If a sweetener tax were implemented, U.S. sugar and HFCS producers would lose US$398–US$489 and US$683–US$844 million per year, respectively.

Suggested Citation

  • Prithviraj Lakkakula & Andrew Schmitz, 2019. "U.S. sweeteners: Combating excess consumption with an excise tax?," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 50(5), pages 543-554, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:agecon:v:50:y:2019:i:5:p:543-554
    DOI: 10.1111/agec.12508
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    Cited by:

    1. Lluc Puig-Codina & Jaime Pinilla & Jaume Puig-Junoy, 2021. "The impact of taxing sugar-sweetened beverages on cola purchasing in Catalonia: an approach to causal inference with time series cross-sectional data," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 22(1), pages 155-168, February.
    2. Diansheng Dong & Yuqing Zheng & Hayden Stewart, 2020. "The effects of food sales taxes on household food spending: An application of a censored cluster model," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 51(5), pages 669-684, September.
    3. Vincenzina Caputo & Jayson L. Lusk, 2020. "What agricultural and food policies do U.S. consumers prefer? A best–worst scaling approach," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 51(1), pages 75-93, January.
    4. Hovhannisyan, Vardges & Bastian, Christopher T., 2022. "Consumption of Low-Intensity and High-Intensity Sweeteners in the United States: Structure, Drivers, and Policy Implications," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322508, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

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