The political legacy of disease control: Evidence from a polio vaccination campaign in China

Xiuheng Shen, Yucheng Sun and Xianbo Zhou

China Economic Review, 2025, vol. 93, issue C

Abstract: Although recent studies have explored the long-term effects of disease control on individuals' educational and labor market outcomes, much less is known about its political consequences. This paper uses the polio vaccination campaign in China as a successful historical event to analyze how disease control interventions affect political trust in adulthood. By combining province-level variation in prevaccine incidence with cohort-level variation in trust-formation ages, we construct individual exposure to the vaccination campaign using a difference-in- differences strategy. Our findings show that exposure to the polio vaccination campaign during the trust-formation period positively affects trust in local government over four decades later. Mechanism analysis highlights that internal belief formation and updates are crucial for these long-term impacts. Further evidence indicates that this trust-building effect is specific to political institutions and public health sectors. Our findings indicate the importance of understanding historical disease control interventions for state legitimacy.

Keywords: Disease control; Political trust; Polio vaccination campaign; Long-term effects; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 I31 N35 Z18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:93:y:2025:i:c:s1043951x25001051

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2025.102447

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