Soda Taxes in U.S. Cities | Episode 25
Since 2015, a handful of U.S. cities have begun taxing soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages. With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, economists from Mathematica, the University of Iowa, and Cornell University studied the impacts of those taxes on purchases, consumption, prices, and product availability. The project was the first to publish results on changes in children's consumption in U.S. cities with a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. It was also the first to publish results on impacts from Oakland's beverage tax. For this episode of On the Evidence, we spoke with Dave Jones, an associate director in the health unit at Mathematica, and Dave Frisvold, an associate professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Iowa, about the project's findings on sweetened beverage taxes in Philadelphia, Oakland, Seattle, and San Francisco. More information about their study is available here: https://www.mathematica.org/news/effects-of-sweetened-beverage-taxes-in-philadelphia-and-oakland-fewer-beverage-purchases This interview was one of a series conducted in support of the 2019 fall research conference hosted by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM). (Jones and Frisvold presented papers related to the beverage tax project at the conference.) Find other interviews related to APPAM's fall research conference here: https://www.mathematica.org/commentary/icymi-on-the-evidence-takes-on-appam