Sustained consumer response: evidence from two-years after implementing the sugar sweetened beverage tax in Mexico

Abstract

In the first year of a 1 peso per liter excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, there was a 6% reduction in purchases of taxed beverages in Mexico. This paper estimates changes in beverage purchases two years after tax implementation.

We used household store purchase data for 6,645 households from January 2012 to December 2015. Changes in purchases of taxed and untaxed beverages in the post-tax years were estimated using two separate models: comparing 2014 with predicted volumes (counterfactual) based on pre-tax (2012-2013) trends, and comparing 2015 with the same counterfactual.

Purchases of taxed beverages decreased by 8.2% over the two years on average (-5.5% in 2014; -9.7% in 2015). The lowest socioeconomic group had the largest decreases in taxed beverages in both years. Untaxed beverage purchases increased 2.1% in the post-tax period.

In Mexico, lower purchases of taxed beverages was sustained and grew in the second year of the tax.