Volume 31, Number 3 (Summer) 1996
Philipson, Tomas. 1996. "Private Vaccination and Public Health: An Empirical Examination for U.S. Measles." Journal of Human Resources 31(3):611-630.
This paper investigates the degree to which the occurrence of vaccine-preventable diseases affects vaccination efforts against such diseases. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey on measles vaccinations in the United States between 1984 and 1990, the paper shows there is strong evidence that the prevalence of measles in the respondent’s state of residence reduces the age in months at which the first measles vaccination occurs. The paper argues that the more prevention of infectious disease responds to prevalence in this manner, the less it responds to price, thereby lowering the role of Pigouvian price subsidies and other demand-stimulating public health measures aimed at solving the under-provision of vaccines and other preventive efforts with positive external effects.
Tomas Philipson is an associate professor of economics an the University of Chicago. He is thankful to Hyeseon Joo, John Cawley, and Tom Lawless for valuable research assistance and to anonymous referees. Seminar participants at the Econometric Society Meetings, the Brown-NYU-Penn-Yale Applied Econometrics Meeting, the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, and Yale University also provided helpful comments. The author is also grateful for financial support from the National Institutes of Health (AHCPR HS 08066-02). The conclusions are not attributable to the National Center for Health Statistics, which produced the data. The data used in this article can be obtained from the author at the Department of Economics, University of Chicago 1126 E. 59th St., Chicago, IL 60637.
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