Cost Recovery and Revenue Estimator

CoRRE is designed for the public health community, advocates, and policymakers to assess the economic cost of smoking that can be recovered through reduction in smoking in their countries. In addition, the estimator will help users assess expected revenue gain from raising cigarette tax that can potentially bring forth the decrease in smoking. It provides estimates of the economic gains in local currency units, U.S. dollars (USD) and International Purchasing Power Parity dollars (Int$PPP). Additionally, the tool suggests the recommended cigarette price and tax per pack to achieve the desired reduction in smoking prevalence. The estimator uses the national economic cost measure which is more comprehensive and an improved method of assessing costs and gains compared to the cost-of-illness approach.

Currency unit: The user can change the currency unit as desired.

Dynamic elements: All green cells will be updated depending on the selected percentage point reduction in smoking prevalence.

Interpretations: Notes for clear interpretation are provided with each estimate. Please hover over the ⓘ icon to see the interpretations.

This estimator aims to provide quantifiable results to understand the economic gains due to smoking reduction and desired cigarette tax increases to induce that reduction.

The estimates of economic cost recovery from reductions in smoking are not available for the countries that have baseline smoking prevalence at 5% or below because the model sets a lower limit of 5% to account for non-commercial use of tobacco. The intended policy impact is to reduce commercial tobacco use to zero and exhaust the remaining potential for economic gain therefrom.

Since tobacco use cannot be eliminated altogether and since many tobacco-related diseases take years to develop, the economic gains are relatively small in the first few years. The estimates provided in this tool correspond to these short-run gains. The cumulative gain over the longer term is expected to be much larger.

Moreover, the full value of lives lost and the suffering of the individuals and their families from tobacco-related diseases and deaths are intangible and are not quantifiable in monetary terms. The true benefit to society from smoking reduction is, therefore, much larger than these measured gains.

The data required for these estimations are not completely available for all countries. Therefore, there are no estimates for countries with missing values for the variables used in the estimation.

Attribution: The Cost Recovery and Revenue Estimator tool is a collaboration of the American Cancer Society (ACS), Vital Strategies and Economics for Health (E4H) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). With research and funding support from E4H-JHU, the tool is adapted from a model developed by ACS researchers in collaboration with Professor AKM Ghulam Hussain at the University of Dhaka to quantify the economic impact of smoking reduction as part of the evaluation of the potential impact of cancer prevention through tobacco control on US populations. The principal investigator for this project is Nigar Nargis at ACS and the co-investigators are Saw Min Thu Oo and Jeffrey Drope at JHU. The website and data visualization have been developed and supported by Vital Strategies, led by Johnny Hsu and David Shin.

Citation: Nargis N, Oo SMT, Drope J. 2025. Cost Recovery and Revenue Estimator. In Drope J, Hamill S, editors, Tobacco Atlas. New York: Vital Strategies and Johns Hopkins University. Available at: Tobacco Atlas