Assessing the societal value of health lost to alcohol use in India compared to excise taxes on alcohol sales
Brief report
Abstract
Introduction
The researchers retrospectively studied the societal value of lost health due to alcohol use and compared it with excise taxes on alcohol sales for India in 2019.
Methods
The researchers estimated the overall alcohol-attributable disease burden using disability-adjusted life-years (DALY) for India and its 30 states for all causes with alcohol use as a risk factor from the GBD 2019 Study.
The societal value of lost health was calculated using value of life-year (VLY) approach by multiplying region-specific factors from ‘Global Health 2035’, 2019–2020 GDP per capita and DALYs.
The researchers acquired the national and state-level (top 10 states) alcohol sales excise taxes from the Reserve Bank of India. Net losses were assessed by subtracting the revenue collected from excise taxes from VLY. All values are in Indian rupees (INR).
Results
The societal value of health lost due to alcohol use in India was 6.2 trillion INR in 2019.
The absolute state-level values varied from 7.3 billion INR in Mizoram to 1.1 trillion INR in Maharashtra.
The per capita values ranged from 950.2 INR for Bihar to 61,332 INR for Mizoram.
6.2 trillion Indian Rupees is approximately 74.70 billion US Dollars, based on an exchange rate of 1 USD = 83 INR.
Nationally, excise tax collection from alcohol sales was 1.8 trillion INR depicting a net loss of 4.4 trillion.
Maharashtra had the largest absolute and per capita net loss.
Conclusions
These are novel estimates depicting the net losses due to alcohol use in India with direct policy implications to disincentivise sales and adequately raise taxes.