Working Paper: NBER ID: w31812
Authors: Virat Agrawal; Neeraj Sood; Christopher M. Whaley
Abstract: The global COVID-19 vaccination campaign is the largest public health campaign in history, with over 2 billion people fully vaccinated within the first 8 months. Nevertheless, the impact of this campaign on all-cause mortality is not well understood. Leveraging the staggered rollout of vaccines, we find that the vaccination campaign across 141 countries averted 2.4 million excess deaths, valued at $6.5 trillion. We also find that an equitable counterfactual distribution of vaccines, with vaccination in each country proportional to its population, would have saved roughly 670,000 more lives. However, this distribution approach would have reduced the total value of averted deaths by $1.8 trillion due to redistribution of vaccines from high-income to low-income countries.
Keywords: COVID-19; vaccination; all-cause mortality; public health; equitable distribution
JEL Codes: I1; I18
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| more equitable vaccine distribution (I14) | saved additional 670,000 lives (J17) |
| increased vaccination rates (I14) | averted approximately 24 million excess deaths (J17) |
| vaccination rates increase (I14) | marginal impact on excess deaths diminishes (J17) |
| increased vaccination rates (I14) | decreased excess deaths (I12) |