Patterns of tobacco consumption in Mexico – current perspective
The aim of this study has been to investigate current issues regarding the consumption of tobacco products in Mexico. The first chapter examines the incidence of the excise of tobacco using data from the National Income and Expenditure Household Survey of 2008. The results showed that, the excise is regressive taking the equivalent of 7.6% of consumption expenditure for smoking households in the lowest, and 3.3% from smoking households in the highest quintile. The unfairness of the excise on tobacco is confirmed by the calculation of the Kakwani index of progressivity which is estimated at -0.196. The results are valid for the 2008 taxschedule. The second chapter investigates the effect of demographic, socio-economic and psychosocial factors influencing the demand for cigarettes in Mexico. The data used for the analysis comes from two sweeps of the Mexican Family Life Survey of 2002 and 2005- 2007, a source individual-level data. A two-part model of cigarette demand is estimated. According to the estimation, a number of significant effects are found to determine the overall level of consumption in both sweeps. In the third chapter a panel hurdle model is applied to data on cigarette consumption. The model has the feature of applying the Box-Cox transformation to the dependent variable in order to address the skew distribution seen in data. It also includes a non-zero correlation coefficient to account for the temporal linkage of consumption. The data used for estimation comes from the short panel of individuals created from the Mexican Family Life Survey. The results reveal that individuals who are unusually likely to participate in the activity of smoking tend to smoke less intensively. This is confirmed by the estimated correlation parameter which appears to be significantly negative. A number of significant effects are found to determine the overall level of consumption overtime.
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