 Pandemics’ backlash: The effects of the 1918 influenza on health attitudes and behaviorChristian Ochsner and Lukas Schmid CERGE-EI Working Papers from The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague Abstract: We study the effects of the largest adverse health shock in modern medicine—the 1918 influenza pandemic—on subsequent shifts in health-related attitudes and behavior and future-oriented policies. Our analysis builds upon self-digitized, individuallevel death-register excerpts, vaccination records, and popular vote counts. We find that greater exposure to influenza leads to a decline in societal support for public health measures at the aggregate level, mainly triggered by deceased peers. However, individual-level data reveal increased vaccination rates in families who experienced influenza-related deaths. These differences did not exist before the pandemic. Our findings link to a U-shaped relationship between suffering from the pandemic and support for effective health policies. Places with predominantly indirectly-affected families drive the aggregate backlash. This challenges the idea that past health shocks improve life expectancy through societal learning. Keywords: Health behavior; Health attitudes; 1918 influenza pandemic; Mistrust (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cer:papers:wp796 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in CERGE-EI Working Papers from The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.