State Dependence in Immunization and the Role of Discouragement

Date
2023-11-07
Authors
Plum, Alexander
Pacheco, Gail
Dasgupta, Kabir
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier
Abstract

We investigate whether having a child immunized at a prior schedule genuinely increases the likelihood of vaccinating the child at the subsequent schedule. We use longitudinal data from the Growing Up in New Zealand study and apply a dynamic random-effects model that also controls for the initial immunization status. Prior to any covariate-adjusted estimations, our data shows that almost 96% of the children immunized at the previous schedule are also immunized at the subsequent schedule. In comparison, only 29% of children who were not immunized at the prior schedule receive immunization at the next milestone, thereby indicating an unadjusted state dependence in immunization of 67 percentage points (p.p.). Upon controlling for relevant covariates and unobserved heterogeneities, the genuine state dependence in immunization is, on average, estimated to be 20 p.p. Importantly, the magnitude of the state dependence is greater for Māori (by 5 p.p.) and also greater for mothers that report being discouraged from having their child immunized during the antenatal period (by 10 p.p.).

Description
Keywords
1402 Applied Economics , General Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences , 3801 Applied economics
Source
Economics and Human Biology, ISSN: 1570-677X (Print); 1570-677X (Online), Elsevier. doi: 10.1016/j.ehb.2023.101313
Rights statement
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).