Response by Adults to Increases in Cigarette Prices by Sociodemographic Characteristics

Matthew C. Farrelly, Jeremy Bray, Terry Pechacek and Trevor Woollery

Southern Economic Journal, 2001, vol. 68, issue 1, 156-165

Abstract: Cigarette excise taxes are widely viewed by health economists as an effective tool to reduce cigarette consumption. However, those opposed to increasing cigarette excise taxes often state that the taxes unfairly target certain segments of the population, notably the poor and minorities. Some of this opposition may have been fueled by a lack of understanding of how the tax will affect the health and welfare of various demographic groups of interest. This article provides guidance to policy makers by estimating price elasticities among adults by gender, income, age, and race or ethnicity. Women, adults with income at or below the median income, young adults, African‐Americans, and Hispanics are most responsive to cigarette price increases. For example, adults with income at or below the median are more than four times as price‐responsive as those with income above the median.

Date: 2001
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2001.tb00404.x

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:soecon:v:68:y:2001:i:1:p:156-165

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Southern Economic Journal from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().