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

Abstract

The current demographic situation in the world encourages the search and implementation of optimal tools for stabilizing the population’s life expectancy and ensuring their health. The study was designed to investigate the impact of environmental taxes, as environmental policy instruments, on the state and the health of the population. The analysis of scientific works, built based on the Publish or Perish software, made it possible to confirm the unfailing relevance of research on the topic of the impact of environmental taxes. Where environmental taxes are considered as a tool for influencing the level of pollution of the surrounding natural Environment and indicators of life and health of the population. The analysis of scientific works published in recent years under the keywords «environmental tax» and «healthy» based on the Scopus scientometric database also confirmed the study’s relevance, considering the level of citations of the presented works. Some authors pay considerable attention to additional taxation of producers of harmful products and subsidizing enterprises that grow or produce eco-products. Other scientists emphasize changing the existing environmental legislation (increasing environmental tax rates, targeted use, introducing additional critical emission limits, etc.). They believe this will have the effect of a hidden intervention in the prevention of disease through reducing climate change. The main part of the study was based on visual confirmation of the relationship between environmental taxes and the population’s level of health using the VOSviewer software product. This bibliometric analysis confirmed that limiting the environmental pollution level due to environmental taxes determines the possibility of improving the population’s health. At the same time, financial instruments for curbing habits harmful to human health also have a positive impact. Clustering made it possible to: confirm the impact of environmental taxes on the actual level of environmental pollution; reflect the dependence of personal habits and tendencies that affect the life and health of the population; to argue the fact that ecological culture and the culture of a healthy lifestyle are formed not only by objective but also by subjective reasons, as well as by the general psychological state of the population; to confirm the existence of the socio-regulatory orientation of the ecological tax, including the environmental exposure and the level of health of the people, etc. The graphical method (built based on Stata software) made it possible to confirm that environmental taxation can improve the state of the natural environment. The transmission nature of environmental taxation’s impact on the population’s life and health is also determined. The research results are a scientific basis for developing the latest environmental policy, which would fully enable the environmental tax to perform its compensatory function, as well as ensure the formation of green production and expand the access of individuals to quality food products.