Why did vaccine attitudes change between 2020-2024 for some people, but not others?

Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine next to needle

Source: Clinical Trials Arena

The United States has one of the highest rates of vaccine skepticism (Sallam 2021). As of October 2022, about 2.5 years after the initial outbreak in the US, only 68% of Americans had received a full vaccination course, and only ⅓ had received a booster shot. From 2020 to 2024, the percentage of Americans who believed that the health benefits of vaccines did not outweigh the costs increased from 24% to 33% (ANES).

Why are vaccines important?

An estimated 154 million lives have been saved by vaccinations in the last 50 years (WHO 2024). The trend of decreasing support for vaccinations could have drastic consequences on public health. The longer it takes to control the spread of an illness, the more time it has to create mutations of the virus that are possibly more deadly or vaccine-resistant.

Why look at Intersectionality?

Discrimination against racial minorities and women is widespread within the medical system, and this discrimination is compounded for women of color. This is a contributing factor to the higher levels of medical mistrust and avoidance of care observed in people of color and women (Campbell et al. 2025, Bazargan et al. 2021, Do et al 2022).

*Sex is used here instead of gender because significantly more data was available under the Sex variable, but it should be noted that gender identity could impact outcomes as well.

Data: ANES 2020

What might cause vaccine hesitance? The literature says:

  1. Race

  2. Conspiratorial Thinking

  3. Party Affiliation

  4. Fox News watcher

  5. Sex
  6. Income
  7. Education

Using an OLS Regression model, my findings indicate that:

  1. Being female has a negative relationship with vaccine hesitancy

  2. Being a person of color has a positive relationship with vaccine hesitancy

  3. The intersectional identity - women of color - has a positive but statistically insignificant relationship with vaccine hesitancy.

In short, this model shows no statistically significant effect of an intersectional identity between race and gender. The most important factors to predict vaccine hesitancy are race, education, income, conspiracy beliefs, and party affiliation.

📄 Download the full version of my paper on the topic

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