Fat vs. Sugar: The Case for a Saturated Fat Tax in Italy

Valeria di Cosmo and Silvia Tiezzi

Health Economics, 2025, vol. 34, issue 4, 727-740

Abstract: When judging the distributional impact of unhealthy food taxes, what matters is not just how much low income people would pay but how much the such taxes would benefit or harm them overall. In this paper, we assess the consumer welfare impact of a fat tax net of its expected benefits computed as savings from weight loss. Using Italian data, we estimate a censored Exact Affine Stone Index (EASI) incomplete demand system for food groups, simulating changes in purchases, calorie intake, consumer welfare, and the monetary value of short‐run health benefits. While the Italian government has proposed a sugar tax, we show that there is no significant excess consumption of added sugars among Italian adults. Instead, excessive fat consumption is more prevalent, making a fat tax a more compelling and effective solution to address diet‐related health risks. Our results suggest costs from fat taxation are larger than benefits at all income levels. As a fraction of income, the net impact would be slightly regressively distributed.

Date: 2025
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.4933

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:34:y:2025:i:4:p:727-740

Access Statistics for this article

Health Economics is currently edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones

More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().