IdEP Seminar "The impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic on vaccination attitudes and vaccination behavior ", Lukas Schmid

How do societies respond to an epidemic in terms of their vaccination attitudes and their vaccination behavior? To answer this question, we link over mortality during the 1918 influenza pandemic to the political support of compulsory vaccination and to real vaccination behavior before and after the pandemic. For vaccination attitudes, we document that a 1% higher mortality during the 1918 influenza pandemic reduces the support of a compulsory vaccination bill by almost 3 percentage points.