The Benefits and Costs of U.S. Employer COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates

Maddalena Ferranna, Lisa Robinson (), Daniel Cadarette, Michael Eber and David Bloom

No 30339, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In 2021, the Biden Administration issued mandates requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for U.S. federal employees and contractors and for some healthcare and private sector workers. Although these mandates have been subject to legal challenges and some have been halted or delayed, rigorous appraisal of their benefits and costs accompanied neither the decision to implement them nor the efforts to terminate them. This paper aims to help fill that gap. We estimate the direct costs and health-related benefits that would have accrued if these vaccination requirements had been implemented as intended. Compared with the vaccination rates observed in January 2022, we find that the mandates could have led to 15 million additional vaccinated individuals, increasing the overall proportion of the fully vaccinated U.S. population to 68%. The associated net benefits depend on the evolution of the pandemic from the time of mandate enactment—information unavailable ex ante to analysts or policymakers. In scenarios involving the emergence of a novel, more transmissible variant, against which vaccination and previous infection offer moderate protection, the estimated net benefits reach more than $16,000 per additional vaccinated individual, with more than 20,000 total deaths averted in total. In scenarios involving a fading pandemic, existing vaccination-acquired or infection-acquired immunity provides sufficient protection, and the mandates’ benefits are unlikely to exceed their costs. Thus, mandates may be most useful when the consequences of inaction are catastrophic. However, we do not compare the effects of mandates with alternative policies for increasing vaccination rates or promoting other protective measures, which may receive stronger public support and be less likely to be overturned by litigation.

JEL-codes: D61 H12 H43 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-08
Note: EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
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Published as Maddalena Ferranna & Lisa A. Robinson & Daniel Cadarette & Michael R. Eber & David E. Bloom, 2023. "The benefits and costs of U.S. employer COVID‐19 vaccine mandates," Risk Analysis, vol 43(10), pages 2053-2068.

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Working Paper: The Benefits and Costs of U.S. Employer COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates (2022)
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