“Improving the diet quality of low-income US households is imperative.”
—Pourya Valizadehand, Texas A&M University; Barry M. Popkin and Shu Wen Ng, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Linking a Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax with Fruit and Vegetable Subsidies
A simulation analysis of the impact on the poor.
Journal Article Jan-01-2022 , , and 2-min read
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Report Publish Date: January 2022
This journal article describes a study simulating the effects—on households of different income levels—of a national sugar-sweetened beverage tax, fruit and vegetable subsidies for low-income households, and a tax paired with fruit and vegetable subsidies.
Primary Takeaways
The authors found that:
- A tax on sugar-sweetened beverages would cause households that buy a lot of sugary drinks to reduce their purchases much more than households who don’t buy a lot of sugary drinks.
- Fruit and vegetable subsidies led low-income households to buy more fresh produce, but not enough to significantly impact nutrition.
- Combining the tax with a subsidy covering 50% of the cost of fruit and vegetables created a net financial gain for low-income households, though less so for households that buy a lot of sugary drinks.
Overview and Objectives
To improve Americans’ diets, the authors say we need more policies that lead people to eat less unhealthy food and more healthy food. They wanted to test whether policies such as sugar-sweetened beverage taxes and fruit and vegetable subsidies might help people, especially people in low-income households, drink fewer sugary beverages and eat more fruits and vegetables.
Hypothesis or Approach
The authors used data from the 2010–2014 Nielsen Homescan Panel, which tracks consumer food and drink purchases. They simulated the effects of a 1-cent per ounce national sugar-sweetened beverage tax, subsidies of 30% and 50% for low-income households’ purchases of fruits and vegetables, and a policy that combines the tax and subsidies.
How This Influences Change
The authors say larger fruit and vegetable subsidies would have a greater effect, and they recommend combining sugar-sweetened beverage taxes with taxes on other unhealthy foods, such as ultra-processed foods.
Research: Go Deeper
Background
US individuals, particularly from low-income subpopulations, have very poor diet quality. Policies encouraging shifts from consuming unhealthy food towards healthy food consumption are needed.
Objectives
We simulate the differential impacts of a national sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) tax and combinations of SSB taxes with fruit and vegetable (FV) subsidies targeted to low-income households on SSB and FV purchases of lower and higher SSB purchasers.
Conclusion
Nutritionally meaningful increases are limited due to low purchase levels before policy implementation. Expanding taxes beyond SSBs, providing larger FV subsidies, or offering subsidies beyond FVs, particularly for low-income households with children, may be more effective.
Am J Clin Nutr, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqab330
Research Team
This study and report was conducted and created by the following people.
- Valizadeh P
- Popkin BM
- Ng SW
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