Taft Grant Awarded to Economics Professor

New University of Cincinnati Economics Assistant Professor Dr. Lenisa Chang has been awarded a Taft grant in support of her travel to Boston, MA.  Dr. Chang will be presenting her research at the Eastern Economics Association conference in March 2012.  Her paper is entitled, “The MMR-Autism Controversy: Did Autism Concerns Affect Vaccine Take Up?”

See the abstract below for further detail:

Dr. Chang examines whether fewer parents have immunized their children in the wake of a strong purported link between autism and the measles mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, despite the fact that this link was refuted by later research.

This task becomes difficult as the timing of the controversy in the US coincided with expansions in medical access for children and other programs that affect childhood immunizations, as well as another controversy regarding mercury containing preservatives in childhood vaccines.

Using a time trends analysis and a few differencing strategies that compare the take up of MMR to other vaccines, Dr. Chang finds that the MMR-autism controversy led to a decline of about 2 percentage points in the take up of MMR and a negative spillover on other vaccines. Dr. Chang finds some evidence that more educated mothers responded more to the controversy, which is consistent with more educated individuals absorbing health information more quickly. However, this disparity persisted even after new research and information about the lack of such link became widespread in the media.