Alcohol-Attributable Fractions for Philippines Tax Scenarios (2026-2045)

This Technical Note was written by Pamela Trangenstein. The technical note calculates alcohol-attributable fractions (AAF) and shows the epidemiologic implications of several scenarios of increasing taxes on alcoholic beverages in the Philippines. The author uses robust epidemiologic methods and publicly available data to calculate relative risks and both the raw and lagged AAFs to account for varying time-to-effect of diseases. The estimates suggest that the AAF for breast cancer is 10.67%, 49.47% for liver cirrhosis, and 28.6% for road traffic injury, among other AAFs. Meanwhile, steeper tax increases would decrease alcohol-attributable deaths. For example, replacing the current 6% annual tax increase with a 10% annual increase for beer and 25% annual increase for spirits would avert 38,021 deaths by 2045. The note concludes with additional technical details on the methodology and the findings.