Pandemics’ Backlash: The Effects of the 1918 Influenza on Health Attitudes and Behavior

Christian Ochsner and Lukas Schmid

No 11903, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

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, individual-level 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)
JEL-codes: D72 H51 I12 I18 N34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp11903.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11903

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().