A Study on the Impact of Food Prices on Tobacco and Alcohol Consumption: A Case Study of CHNS Data in China

According to the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO), many countries use price as a policy tool to discourage the consumption of alcohol and tobacco products. Since food prices may have crowding-out and substitution effects on tobacco and alcohol consumption, the impact of food price changes on tobacco and alcohol consumption is unpredictable. The purpose of this paper is to use China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data to accurately estimate the key factors in tobacco and alcohol product consumption decisions and consumption levels. In addition to the prices of eight major categories of food, this paper identifies several social demographic and economic factors associated with the overuse of these products in the country The OLS regression results in this paper show that the impact of different food prices on residents’ tobacco and alcohol consumption is inconsistent. Among them, the food price has the greatest influence on beer consumption and the least influence on liquor consumption. This may be because alcohol has the strongest social attributes and beer the weakest. In addition, the effects of the same food on tobacco and alcohol are also inconsistent. This paper concludes that this may be related to the geographical distribution of people’s research preferences.