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Studies suggest lotteries or cash payouts improve vaccination rates

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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.

A lottery may also be more cost-effective than direct cash payments. West and his colleagues calculated that Ohio’s $5.6 million lottery has enticed 80,000 residents to get vaccinated—a figure they arrived at by comparing the state’s actual vaccination data with a simulation incorporating rates for demographically similar states that did not implement a lottery. That amounted to $68 for each new person vaccinated—a bargain compared with a $100 payment. ...

 

 

 

 

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