Economic History Seminar

Du 10/01/2024 de 12:00 à 13:30

R1.09

MONTALBO Adrien(SUSSEX)
MONTALBO Adrien(SUSSEX)

The Economic Origins of Vaccine Hesitancy: Evidence from Smallpox in Nineteenth-Century France

In spite of a vast medical literature investigating the impact of socio-economic factors on vaccine uptake and of a growing literature in economic history focusing mostly on the consequences of epidemics, little is known about vaccine hesitancy the drivers of vaccination in the long run. This paper aims at filling this gap in the literature by focusing on vaccination against smallpox in nineteenth-century France. Smallpox was one the deadliest disease up until the introduction of vaccination in the nineteenth century, as it is estimated to have killed between 50,000 and 80,000 persons per year in France during the eighteenth century. To study the determinants of vaccination, we collected precise data on the number of children vaccinated each year within French departments between 1806 and 1888. By using wheat prices instrumented by rainfall and the phylloxera crisis as an exogenous source of income variation, we find that negative income shocks were linked to an increase in vaccination in France during the nineteenth century. These outcomes indicate that families reacted to negative shocks by vaccinating their children more often. This counter-intuitive result can be explained by the fact that parents chose to vaccinate their children when their existence was threatened by negative income shocks. Our results also indicate that the positive effect of negative income shocks on vaccination was stronger in department where child labour was more common. In areas where families depended more strongly on the income of children, the death of a child represented a stronger shock on the total income of the household. Families were therefore more willing to protect their children when their life was put at risk by negative income shocks within these departments.