SynthesisAddiction (Abingdon, England)2022
Prices, taxes and alcohol use: a systematic umbrella review.
Synthesis in Addiction (Abingdon, England), 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Public health policies and interventions to address health inequities in high-income countries: an umbrella review.BMC public health · 2026Pooled it
- The effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of population-level policies to reduce alcohol use: A systematic umbrella review.Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique · 2025Pooled it
- The impacts of policies controlling the spatial availability of take-away alcohol on consumption and harms: A systematic narrative review.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2025Pooled it
- Which interventions for alcohol use should be included in a universal healthcare benefit package? An umbrella review of targeted interventions to address harmful drinking and dependence.BMC public health · 2023Pooled it
- Options for modifying UK alcohol and tobacco tax: A rapid scoping review of the evidence over the period 1997-2018.NIHR open research · 2023Pooled it
- Prices, taxes and alcohol use: a systematic umbrella review.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2022Pooled it
- Optimising the European Code Against Cancer, 5th edition, to increase awareness of avoidable cancer risks in all socioeconomic groups.Molecular oncology · 2026Trial
- Article
- Age 18-30 Trajectories of Beverage-Specific Binge Drinking Prevalence Over 30 Years for Men and Women in the United States.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2026Article
- Assessing the progress in implementing population-based policies to reduce the burden of noncommunicable diseases in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 2010-2024.Health policy and planning · 2026Article
- Impact of alcohol excise taxation and structural reforms on per capita consumption in Thailand, 1995-2021: an interrupted time-series analysis.The International journal on drug policy · 2026Article
- Examining changes in the prevalence of cost-motivated alcohol reduction attempts in the context of a cost-of-living crisis and alcohol duty reforms: A population survey of risky drinkers in Great Britain, 2021-2024.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2026Article
- Rising Global Burden of Alcohol-Attributable Breast Cancer in Women: Regional Inequalities and Temporal Trends.International journal of women's health · 2026Article
- Can alcohol use explain the increase in educational inequalities in all-cause mortality after 2010 in the USA? A three-way interaction analysis.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2026Article
- Global effects of increased taxation of tobacco, alcohol and sugar-sweetened beverages on tax receipts: a modelling analysis.BMJ global health · 2025Article
- A return on investment analysis for the 2017 increase in alcohol excise taxation in Lithuania.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2025Article
- Targeting alcohol use in high-risk population groups: a US microsimulation study of beverage-specific pricing policies.The Lancet. Public health · 2025Article
- Advocacy and the Opioid Epidemic: Positioning Providers to Influence Policy and Improve Public Health.Focus (American Psychiatric Publishing) · 2025Article
- Educational attainment as a potential effect modifier of alcohol use and 100% alcohol-attributable mortality in the United States-A longitudinal analysis of mortality linked survey data from 1997 to 2018.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2025Article
- Trends in economic indicators, alcohol use, and alcohol-attributable health indicators in India.Alcohol and alcoholism (Oxford, Oxfordshire) · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
aimTo measure the impact of taxes and prices on alcohol use with particular attention to the different context of rising alcohol consumption in low- and middle-income countries.
methodsSystematic review: we searched MEDLINE, Embase, EconLit and LILACS, grey literature, hand-searched five specialty journals and examined references of relevant studies. We considered all reviews that included studies that quantitatively examined the relationship between alcohol prices or taxes and alcohol use. At least two reviewers independently screened the articles and extracted the characteristics, methods and main results and assessed the quality of each included study. We identified 30 reviews.
resultsThere was overwhelming evidence that higher alcohol prices and taxes were associated with lower total alcohol consumption and that price responsiveness varied by beverage type. Total own-price elasticities of alcohol demand were consistently negative and substantial enough to be policy meaningful; total own-price elasticities for beer, wine and spirits were found to be approximately -0.3, -0.6 and -0.65. Reviews generally concluded that higher taxes and prices were associated with lower heavy episodic drinking and heavy drinking, although the magnitude of these associations was generally unclear. Reviews provided no evidence that alcohol price responsiveness differed by socioeconomic status, mixed and contradictory evidence with respect to age and sex and limited evidence that price responsiveness in low- and middle-income countries was approximately the same as in high-income countries.
conclusionsTaxes are effective in reducing alcohol use. Moreover, increasing the price of alcohol by increasing taxes can also be expected to increase tax revenue, because the demand for alcohol is most certainly inelastic.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.