ArticleBulletin of the World Health Organization2012
Estimating the cost of new public health legislation.
Article in Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Estimated health impacts of reformulation resulting from Health Star Rating nutrition labelling in Aotearoa New Zealand.Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand · 2025Article
- Improving the accuracy of blood pressure measuring devices in Australia: a modelled return on investment study.Journal of human hypertension · 2024Article
- The Potential Effect of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Tax on Obesity Prevalence in Tanzania.The East African health research journal · 2023Article
- Can a Greenhouse Gas Emissions Tax on Food also Be Healthy and Equitable? A Systemised Review and Modelling Study from Aotearoa New Zealand.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Potential effect of real-world junk food and sugar-sweetened beverage taxes on population health, health system costs and greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand: a modelling study.BMJ nutrition, prevention & health · 2022Article
- Modelled health benefits of a sugar-sweetened beverage tax across different socioeconomic groups in Australia: A cost-effectiveness and equity analysis.PLoS medicine · 2017Article
- Study protocol: combining experimental methods, econometrics and simulation modelling to determine price elasticities for studying food taxes and subsidies (The Price ExaM Study).BMC public health · 2016Article
- The health gains and cost savings of dietary salt reduction interventions, with equity and age distributional aspects.BMC public health · 2016Article
- Health, Health Inequality, and Cost Impacts of Annual Increases in Tobacco Tax: Multistate Life Table Modeling in New Zealand.PLoS medicine · 2015Article
- Investing in breastfeeding - the world breastfeeding costing initiative.International breastfeeding journal · 2015Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo develop a new method for estimating the cost to governments of enacting public health legislation.
methodsWe adopted a central government perspective in estimating costs. The parliamentary cost of legislative acts and regulations in New Zealand was calculated from the proportion of parliamentary time devoted to law-making (i.e. sitting days in the debating chamber), and the cost of associated policy advice from government agencies was calculated from the proportion of documented policy issues related to law-making. The relative costs of acts and regulations were estimated from the number of pages in the legislation.
findingsWe estimated that, between 1999 and 2010, 26.7% of parliamentary resources and 16.7% of policy advice from government agencies were devoted to generating new laws in New Zealand. The mean cost of an act was 2.6 million United States dollars (US$; 95% uncertainty interval, UI: 1.5 to 4.4 million) and the mean cost of a regulation was US$ 382 000 (95% UI: 22 000 to 665 000). For comparison, the average cost of a bill enacted by the 50 state governments in the United States of America between 2008 and 2009 was US$ 980 000.
conclusionWe were able to estimate the cost of new legislation in New Zealand. Our method for estimating this cost seemed to capture the main government costs involved and appears to be generally applicable to other developed countries. Ideally such costs should be included in economic evaluations of public health interventions that involve new legislation.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.