Seven U.S. cities, from Philadelphia to San Francisco, have adopted so-called soda taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) since November 2014. Now researchers from Tufts and Harvard say they’ve identified three factors for success in such efforts, with the most important being Democratic dominance among residents.
“Roughly 40 percent of Americans live within local jurisdictions where the Democratic Party dominates, so room exists for local SSB taxes to continue spreading,” write the researchers in a “viewpoint” published online by the journal Food Policy. Other key factors are “external financial support for pro-tax advocates, and a political message appropriate to the process (public health for ballot issues; budget revenue for city council votes),” says the abstract of the article.
The researchers considered a variety of possible factors, including city population, median household income, percentage of high school graduates, and poverty levels along with party registration and the type of campaign involved. The taxes have been presented as public health measures in some cities and as revenue raisers in others.
“These findings suggest that voters respond to improved health, rather than simply raising revenue for more city spending; while in contrast, inside the city council chamber, politicians appreciate having more money to spend,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, co-author of the viewpoint and dean of the Tufts school of nutrition.