The Anti-Vaccination Movement

Vaccines have been proven to protect from many diseases and infections. However, not all parents choose to have their children vaccinated due to personal beliefs regarding the potential side effects. But even the children who do not receive vaccinations benefit from the results, because the majority of their peers have been vaccinated and create a “barrier” against the infections.Vaccinations are thus a positive consumption externality. This results in a private marginal benefit curve that is below the social marginal benefit curve. As we have learned in class, the main issue which externalities cause is a misallocation of resources; in the case of a positive consumption externality, the market allocation is less than the output of allocative efficiency.

In some California schools, more and more parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children. This causes the difference between the market allocation and the socially efficient allocation to continue to increase. This has prompted school officials to seek a solution: “They produced handouts emphasizing the importance of immunizations and asked parents seeking belief exemptions to get counseling from a healthcare practitioner. A state law that went into effect this year makes this a requirement.” However, the number of those opting out has still continued to climb. Coase's solutions fail in regard to this issue because there is a large amount of people on both sides of the argument, making it hard to reach an agreement. Also, parents are likely to free-ride once the necessary threshold for immunity reaches 92%.