Paying people to get the Covid-19 shot may be the way to overcome skepticism about the vaccine
Jason L. Riley of The WSJ. Excerpts:
". . . how do you convince enough people to get inoculated at a time when public trust in government institutions is at historic lows?
One way to go is using carrots instead of sticks. Telling people they can’t fly or send their kids to school may work in some cases, but there’s evidence that paying people to get vaccinated might be more effective. In a typical year, less than half of American adults bother to get flu shots. But a 2015 study conducted by economists at Swarthmore College found that offering people a $30 reward was enough to increase vaccination rates by 12 percentage points.
A growing number of high-profile economists have called for using such a model to address Covid. They include Paul Romer, a Nobel Prize winner; N. Greg Mankiw, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush ; and Steven Levitt of “Freakonomics” fame. A proposal floated in August by Robert Litan of the Brookings Institution would offer $1,000 to 275 million Americans, or roughly 80% of the population, to take the vaccine. The cost would be about $275 billion—a large number, but not in comparison to the trillions we’ve already spent battling Covid. Congress is currently contemplating yet another pandemic relief package with a price tag of at least $900 billion."
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