IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2025-21.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Shifting sweetness: impacts of South Africa's Health Promotion Levy on sugar-sweetened beverages

Author

Listed:
  • Tim Cejka
  • Marlies Piek
  • Mazhar Waseem

Abstract

Sin taxes are increasingly being used to discourage the consumption of goods perceived to harm individuals and society. This paper examines the impact of South Africa's Health Promotion Levy (HPL)—the first sugar tax implemented in Africa—on the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) in the country. Using comprehensive data from excise returns submitted by manufacturers and importers of SSBs, we find that the HPL was extremely effective in reducing the consumption of sugar through these beverages.

Suggested Citation

  • Tim Cejka & Marlies Piek & Mazhar Waseem, 2025. "Shifting sweetness: impacts of South Africa's Health Promotion Levy on sugar-sweetened beverages," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2025-21, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
  • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2025-21
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp2025-21-impacts-South-Africas-health-promotion-levy-sugar-sweetened-beverages.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Raj Chetty & Adam Looney & Kory Kroft, 2009. "Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1145-1177, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andreas R. Kostøl & Andreas S. Myhre, 2021. "Labor Supply Responses to Learning the Tax and Benefit Schedule," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(11), pages 3733-3766, November.
    2. Persson, Petra, 2018. "Attention manipulation and information overload," Behavioural Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(1), pages 78-106, May.
    3. John Y. Campbell, 2016. "Restoring Rational Choice: The Challenge of Consumer Financial Regulation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 1-30, May.
    4. Beestermöller, Matthias, 2017. "Striking Evidence? Demand Persistence for Inter-City Buses from German Railway Strikes," Discussion Papers in Economics 31768, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    5. Fossen, Frank M. & König, Johannes, 2015. "Public health insurance and entry into self-employment," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112934, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Hindriks, Jean & Serse, Valerio, 2022. "The incidence of VAT reforms in electricity markets: Evidence from Belgium," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    7. repec:ags:jrapmc:122316 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Reyes, Germán, 2024. "Coarse Wage-Setting and Behavioral Firms," IZA Discussion Papers 17039, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Ying Zhang & Yingli Huang, 2023. "Killing Two Birds with One Stone or Missing One of Them? The Synergistic Governance Effect of China’s Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme on Pollution Control and Carbon Emission Reduction," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-25, June.
    10. Haisken-DeNew, John & Hasan, Syed & Jha, Nikhil & Sinning, Mathias, 2018. "Unawareness and selective disclosure: The effect of school quality information on property prices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 449-464.
    11. Matthias Krapf & David Staubli, 2020. "The Corporate Elasticity of Taxable Income: Event Study Evidence from Switzerland," CESifo Working Paper Series 8715, CESifo.
    12. Sebastian Eichfelder & Mona Lau, 2015. "Capitalization of capital gains taxes: (In)attention and turn-of-the-year returns," FEMM Working Papers 150019, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.
    13. Heyes, Anthony & Lyon, Thomas P. & Martin, Steve, 2018. "Salience games: Private politics when public attention is limited," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 396-410.
    14. Paskalev, Zdravko & Yildirim, Huseyin, 2017. "A theory of outsourced fundraising: Why dollars turn into “Pennies for Charity”," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 1-18.
    15. Cakici, Nusret & Zaremba, Adam, 2022. "Salience theory and the cross-section of stock returns: International and further evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(2), pages 689-725.
    16. Annette Alstadsæter & Wojciech Kopczuk & Kjetil Telle, 2019. "Social networks and tax avoidance: evidence from a well-defined Norwegian tax shelter," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 26(6), pages 1291-1328, December.
    17. Eichfelder, Sebastian & Lau, Mona, 2014. "Capital gains taxes and asset prices: The impact of tax awareness and procrastination," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 170, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    18. Liran Einav & Dan Knoepfle & Jonathan Levin & Neel Sundaresan, 2014. "Sales Taxes and Internet Commerce," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(1), pages 1-26, January.
    19. Forbes, Kristin & Fratzscher, Marcel & Kostka, Thomas & Straub, Roland, 2016. "Bubble thy neighbour: Portfolio effects and externalities from capital controls," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 85-104.
    20. Christopher Jeffords, 2014. "Preference-directed regulation when ethical environmental policy choices are formed with limited information," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 573-606, March.
    21. Kim, Jinyoung & Kim, Seonghoon & Koh, Kanghyock, 2022. "Labor market institutions and the incidence of payroll taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tax; Commodities; Taxation; Health; Promotion;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2025-21. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.