Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP15847
Authors: Monica Martinez-Bravo; Andreas Stegmann
Abstract: In July 2011, the Pakistani public learnt that the CIA had used a vaccination campaign as cover to capture Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban leveraged on this information and launched an anti-vaccine propaganda campaign to discredit vaccines and vaccination workers. We evaluate the effects of these events on immunization by implementing a Difference-in-Differences strategy across cohorts and districts. We find that vaccination rates declined 12 to 20\% per standard deviation in support for Islamist parties. These results suggest that information discrediting vaccination campaigns can negatively affect trust in health services and demand for immunization.
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Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| disclosure of the CIA's vaccine ruse (Y50) | decline in vaccination rates in Pakistan (I32) |
| support for Islamist parties (P33) | decline in vaccination rates in Pakistan (I32) |
| decline in vaccination rates (I19) | increase in polio cases (I19) |
| disclosure of the CIA's vaccine ruse (Y50) | erosion of trust in vaccines and health services (I14) |
| erosion of trust in vaccines and health services (I14) | decline in vaccination rates (I19) |
| disclosure of the CIA's vaccine ruse (Y50) | gender dynamics in vaccination rates (J16) |