IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ehbiol/v55y2024ics1570677x24000935.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Discrimination backfires? Minority ethnic disparities in vaccine hesitancy

Author

Listed:
  • Costa-Font, Joan
  • Docrat, Fatima

Abstract

A number of minority ethnic groups (MEGs) exhibited persistent reluctance to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. This paper attempts to empirically identify and validate some of the contentious behavioral determinants for vaccine hesitancy (VH) that remain unexplained including the role of risk perceptions, trust in government institutions, and prior experiences of racism and trauma. We draw on unique longitudinal data from a minority-boosted sample that was collected in the United Kingdon (UK). We document robust evidence of MEG disparities in VH, which declined between November 2020 and March 2021. While VH is associated to both historical and current distrust in government, risk beliefs, exposure to racism, and an individuals socio-economic background, these factors do not fully explain MEG disparities. Furthermore, similar patterns of inequality are observed when we examine MEG disparities in healthcare use, suggesting that disparities in VH reflect broader unobservable structural barriers to healthcare access.

Suggested Citation

  • Costa-Font, Joan & Docrat, Fatima, 2024. "Discrimination backfires? Minority ethnic disparities in vaccine hesitancy," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:55:y:2024:i:c:s1570677x24000935
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101441
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X24000935
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101441?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19; Vaccination hesitancy; Ethnicity; Race; Health care access; Minority ethnic groups; Health Inequality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:55:y:2024:i:c:s1570677x24000935. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622964 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.