Studies suggest lotteries or cash payouts improve vaccination rates

What does it take to convince someone to get vaccinated? U.S. officials all the way up to President Joe Biden are hoping cash will do the trick.

Directly giving Americans money to get a vaccine hasn’t been tested before, but studies in Africa and Latin America have shown cash payments prod individuals to make use of health services, including pediatrician visits, nutrition consultations, and educational sessions, according to Amanda Glassman, a public health expert at the Center for Global Development. One study, conducted in Nigeria, found that conditional cash transfers increased childhood measles vaccination rates by 27%.

Although there are few studies of the effectiveness of lotteries as a medical incentive, some economists suggest they could appeal to the type of people who are hesitant to get vaccinated for COVID-19. Those who have not been vaccinated are more likely to tolerate risk, they suggest, meaning the hesitant might be more receptive to a lottery than the population at large. A lottery could also capitalize on a phenomenon called “probability neglect,” where individuals will irrationally interpret probabilities in their favor.