NC Policy Watch: “The chance to win $1 million did not lead to increased vaccination rates against COVID-19, according to a new study published Friday that examined the states that held vaccine lotteries earlier this year.
There was a “near zero” association between those cash drawings and additional vaccinations in states like Colorado, which held five drawings among vaccinated individuals, and North Carolina, which held four.
“We were really excited when we saw these policies come out and were really hopeful that they were going to be effective, and they just turned out not to be,” Andrew Friedson, an associate economics professor at University of Colorado Denver and one of the authors of the study, told Colorado Newsline.
Dhaval Dave, Benjamin Hansen and Joseph J. Sabia co-authored the study.
Friedson and his team examined vaccination rates before and after the announcement of a lottery in 19 states, and then compared those rates to those in non-lottery states. They discovered little to no association between the lottery announcement and the number of vaccines administered after that announcement date, indicating that the lottery strategy was ineffective.”