Source: New Zealand Ministry of Health
Summary
The Public Health Agency, within the Ministry of Health, commissioned the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) to conduct an updated analysis of the costs of alcohol related harm in New Zealand. This was to support an independent review of the alcohol levy, undertaken by Allen + Clarke.
The NZIER report is the first estimate of the costs of alcohol harm to New Zealand since 2009.
The report is focused on informing future investment of the levy to help prevent alcohol harm, by estimating the total gross cost of alcohol harm and how these costs are distributed across society. Because of this focus it is not a cost-benefit analysis.
The report made the following estimates:
- $9.1b estimated total cost of alcohol harm based on disability-adjusted life years
- $4.8b associated with disability-adjusted life years from Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD)
- $1.2 b associated with disability-adjusted life years from alcohol use disorder
- $281m – intimate partner violence (for alcohol use disorder alone)
- $74m – child maltreatment (for hazardous drinking alone),
- $2.1b in societal cost of road crashes where alcohol was a factor
- $4b in lost productivity associated with alcohol use, including FASD, crimes and workplace absenteeism
- $810m, predominantly in health and ACC spending.
It is important to note the above estimates represent different ways of categorising alcohol harm and in some instances overlap. For example, costs associated with FASD may also show up in lost productivity and health spending. For this reason, the categories should not be compared directly to one another or to the total estimated harm from alcohol use ($9.1bn).
In addition, the NZIER report made some broad recommendations on the approach to investing the levy. These included:
- levy funding decisions should be focused on areas with evidence of impact, cost-effectiveness and scale of unmet need
- agencies should consider using a portion of levy funds to fill the evidence gaps identified by the NZIER report, and
- agencies should consider using a portion of levy funds to fund areas of harm with strong causal attribution to alcohol consumption.
