Vaccination as investment in human capital

Abstract

Vaccines can be regarded by individuals as investments in human capital that can yield future returns in the form of the direct utility of health as well as the utility of higher earnings from future productive time. From the societal perspective, vaccines have an emergent property when herd immunity is achieved allowing whole communities to lower their need for precautions and disease control spending. The additional value of vaccines to society is not accounted for by individual choices to accept a vaccine, hence the individually optimal vaccine coverage rate will predictably fall short of the socially optimal coverage. The human capital calculation of the individual value of vaccines does not completely account for nonrational behavioral economics effects on vaccine hesitancy. Nonrational heuristics drive people to incorrectly overweight small consequences in the present and underweight large benefits in the future. People can also take shortcuts like attending to emotions such as fear or dread or shortcut risk-benefit assessment by emulating the choices of people in their social network. In the face of the predictable shortfall in vaccine acceptance, governments will need to play a role in subsidizing access to good information about vaccine benefits and risks and lowering all access barriers. The amount the government allocates to subsidizing vaccine coverage has an upper bound based on the efficacy of promotion measures and the full social utility of achieving higher rates of coverage.