Costs of Taxing Sodium: A Lunch Meat Application
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The current American diet contains excessive amounts of sodium and saturated fat, which are high risk factors for cardiovascular disease (US Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010). Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported lunch meats to be the second highest source of sodium in American diets. Using 2006 Nielsen Homescan data and an AIDS framework, this study estimates the demand for eight disaggregated lunch meat products to determine the welfare costs associated with consuming these meat products. The estimated welfare analysis revealed that a tax rate that increases the price of the highest-sodium lunch meat (pepperoni) by 25 percent can reduce lunch meat consumption as well as lower the intake of lunch meat sodium by 20 percent.