Anatomy of a Health Scare: Education, Income and the MMR Controversy in the UK

Dan Anderberg, Arnaud Chevalier and Jonathan Wadsworth

No 3590, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: One theory for why there is a strong education gradient in health outcomes is that more educated individuals more quickly absorb new information about health technology. The MMR controversy in the UK provides a case where, for a brief period of time, some highly publicized research suggested that a particular multi-component vaccine, freely provided to young children, could have potentially serious side-effects. As the controversy set in, uptake of the MMR vaccine by more educated parents decreased significantly faster than that by less educated parents, turning a significant positive education gradient into a negative one. The fact that the initial information was subsequently overturned and the decline in uptake ceased suggests that our results are not driven by other unrelated trends. Somewhat puzzling, more educated parents also reduced their uptake of other non-controversial childhood vaccines. As an alternative to the MMR, parents may purchase single vaccines privately; the MMR is the only vaccine for which we observe a strong effect of income on uptake.

Keywords: health outcomes; childhood vaccinations; education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H31 I38 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2008-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Journal of Health Economics, 2011, 30 (3), 515-530

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Related works:
Journal Article: Anatomy of a health scare: Education, income and the MMR controversy in the UK (2011)
Working Paper: Anatomy of a Health Scare: Education, Income and the MMR Controversy in the UK (2009)
Working Paper: Anatomy of a health scare: education, income and the MMR controversy in the UK (2009)
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