Impact of the COVID-19 vaccinations on economic outcomes and mental health services in the U.S

Abstract

The development of vaccines has long been viewed as a critical public health tool to raise immunity against the COVID-19 virus and to reopen economic activities globally. Against this background, this study examines the impact of COVID-19 vaccinations on economic outcomes and mental health services in the U.S. We employed the Household Pulse Survey covering 549, 950 and 57, 892 vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, respectively. For the causal analysis, we control the differences between the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups using propensity score matching (PSM) and augmented inverse probability weighting (AIPW) methods. Economic outcomes include whether individuals work on-site, telework or work from home, in-store shopping, job loss, or food sufficient. We also consider whether individuals experience mental health distress and receive mental health services as a potential outcome. The empirical results show that the probability of working on-site, in-store shopping, food sufficiency, and using mental health services are significantly higher among the recipients of the COVID-19 vaccines than non-recipients. We also find that the likelihood of teleworking and job loss decreased significantly among the recipients of the COVID-19 vaccine compared to non-recipients. The magnitude of the estimated impact across race and ethnic groups is mixed, which shows that vaccination effects are heterogeneous across the races/ethnic groups in the sample.