Environmental Taxes Impact on the Population Health Protection: Cross-Country Analysis

Abstract

With each passing year, solving the demographic problem and the problem of population health is becoming more urgent, posing new challenges to politicians, producers and society. It has been proven that a person who cares about the quality of food, monitors the daily needs of vitamins and trace elements, consumes clean water, lives in an environmentally friendly area (away from industrial enterprises) is healthier than those who are unscrupulous in these aspects. The consequences of carelessness in health are the emergence of chronic diseases, the development of diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and more. In some places, the lack of a balanced diet and living in industrial regions also increases the mortality rate. The systematization of scientific background showed that both domestic and international scientists explore the role of environmental policy in public health. Existing theoretical and empirical research shows that the effective use of environmental tools could positively impact public health and life expectancy. However, the theoretical findings showed that foreign scholars have a more extensive interest in issues of environmental disasters and crises spreading in their countries. This article aims to confirm or refuse the hypothesis on the impact of environmental taxes and the environmental pollution level on people’s lives and health. The correlation-regression analysis allowed identifying a list of indicators that directly and inversely affect health and life expectancy. In the study, the dependent variable is the environmental tax revenues, which in most cases had a significant impact on health and life indicators (including the incidence of tuberculosis, cancer, diabetes, unintentional poisoning mortality, and life expectancy). It should be noted that environmental taxation should be considered in terms of ensuring the compensatory function and the amount of environmental damage which currently affects the living conditions. The obtained results could be provided as a scientific basis for further research on key determinants of improving public health and lives using the environmental taxation tools (environmental tax payments, additional financing of entrepreneurial activities that imitate green production, promotion of healthy eating, etc.).