A higher education may have its drawbacks. New research finds that parents in relatively high socioeconomic brackets forgo vaccines for their children more often than poorer individuals. Between 2008 and 2009, vaccination rates in children insured by commercial plans — a surrogate for higher income — dropped nearly four percentage points while vaccination rates for children covered under Medicaid actually increased, according to the annual State of Health Care Quality report.
Fears that vaccines may cause autism, a scientifically baseless myth fueled by misinformed celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy, may be one reason why families with higher incomes have skipped out on them in the past year.
But health experts like Dr. Robert W. Frenck Jr., professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, warn that this downward trend could jeopardize public health. Immunization rates for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) have declined from 93.5 percent in 2008 to 90.6 percent in 2009, while diphtheria, tetanus and whopping cough vaccination rates dropped from 87.2 percent to 85.4 percent in the same time period, and chicken pox vaccines fell from 92 percent to 90.6 percent.
“It seems that the more well-educated people have a greater fear of vaccines than their less-informed counterparts. Unfortunately, I think they read too much about these completely unfounded myths about vaccines and autism on the Internet. Instead, what they should realize is that by opting to not get their children vaccinated, they are only jeopardizing the health — not only of their own children, but that of the other kids in their communities,” explains ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross.