Anas Yasir Khan

https://doi.org/10.64823/ijter.2608007

Abstract Governments use "sin taxes" on things like tobacco and alcohol to help fix the health problems and social costs they cause. In India, we've seen these taxes go up quite a bit, especially after the GST was introduced in 2017. This paper looks into whether these higher prices actually made people across different states stop using these products. We used data from the National Family Health Surveys (NFHS-4 and 5) and the Global Adult Tobacco Survey to test this. Using OLS regression and price elasticity models, we checked how much the post-GST changes really mattered. The data shows that tobacco use dropped from 48.2% in 2010 to 32.6% in 2021, and alcohol use fell from 32.1% to 17.5%. However, the numbers show that both products have "inelastic demand".The Price Elasticity of Demand for tobaccowas $-0.313 and alcohol was $-0.682. Basically, this means people don't change their habits very much just because the price goes up. Because of this, the study finds that while taxes are a good start, they aren't enough on their own. To really see a long-term change, India needs to combine these taxes with better regulations and programs that actually change how people behave.

Governments use "sin taxes" on things like tobacco and alcohol to help fix the health problems and social costs they cause. In India, we've seen these taxes go up quite a bit, especially after the GST was introduced in 2017. This paper looks into whether these higher prices actually made people across different states stop using these products. We used data from the National Family Health Surveys (NFHS-4 and 5) and the Global Adult Tobacco Survey to test this. Using OLS regression and price elasticity models,we checked how much the post-GST changes really mattered. The data shows that tobacco use dropped from 48.2% in 2010 to 32.6% in 2021, and alcohol use fell from 32.1% to 17.5%. However, the numbers show that both products have "inelastic demand".The Price Elasticity of Demand for tobaccowas $-0.313 and alcohol was $-0.682. Basically, this means people don't change their habits very much just because the price goes up. Because of this, the study finds that while taxes are a good start, they aren't enough on their own. To really see a long-term change, India needs to combine these taxes with better regulations and programs that actually change how people behave.

This research studies the causal relationship between rural female labour force participation in India and the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). Because of the program’s progressive three-phased rollout throughout districts (2006-2008) we were able to perform a quasi-experimental study. A panel data set of 1,224 observations covering 68 districts across 10 states from 2004 to 2021 was used for the study. Along with that Callaway and Sant’Anna’s heterogeneity robust staggered DiD estimator is also used in the study to check for robustness of the study results. Our initial two-way fixed effects (TWFE) estimate suggests MGNREGS implementation increased rural female LFPR by about 2.29 percentage points (p < 0.001). The Callaway- Sant’Anna simple weighted average treatment effect was 3.33 percentage points. For the first 2 phases (2006) and (2007) the cohort-specific average treatment effects on the treated (ATTs) were 3.63 and 2.72 percentage points respectively. It aligns with the MGNREGS’s objective to assist marginalised women as heterogeneity analysis showed noticeable larger impacts in regions with higher percentages of SC/ST groups of people. We confirmed these results' reliability using permutation tests (p = 0.00), placebo timing checks, state-by-state exclusion, and alternative control specifications. The findings of this study contribute to the growing literature on the role of workfare programmes in promoting women's economic inclusion and labour market participation. Although economic empowerment is not directly measured, the observed increase in female labour force participation represents an important mechanism through which women may gain greater economic agency, financial independence, and bargaining power within households. These results suggest that well-designed employment guarantee programmes can serve as effective instruments for enhancing women's participation in economic activity and fostering broader processes of empowerment in rural India.