COVID-19 Vaccination Mandates and Vaccine Uptake

Abstract

We estimate the impact of government-mandated proof of vaccination requirements for access to public venues and non-essential businesses on COVID-19 vaccine uptake. We use event-study and difference-in-differences approaches exploiting the variation in the timing of these measures across Canadian provinces. We find that the announcement of a vaccination mandate is associated with large increase in new first-dose vaccinations in the first week (more than 50% on average) and the second week (more than 100%) immediately following the announcement. The estimated effect starts waning about six weeks past the announcement. Counterfactual simulations using our estimates suggest that these mandates have led to about 289,000 additional first-dose vaccinations in Canada as of September 30, 2021, which is 1 to 8 weeks after the policy announcements across the different provinces. Time-series analysis corroborates our results for Canada, and we further estimate that national vaccine mandates in three European countries also led to large gains in first-dose vaccinations (7+ mln in France, 4+ mln in Italy and 1+ mln in Germany, 7 to 12 weeks after the policy announcements). NOTE: The reported numbers may change with more data. Please see updated version when available.