Benefits and Costs of COVID Vaccine Mandates – Center for Health Decision Science

The Biden Administration issued several mandates in 2021 requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for U.S. federal employees and for some healthcare and private sector workers. Although these mandates were controversial and some have been halted by litigation, they were never subject to full evaluation of their benefits and costs. Aiming to fill this gap, CHDS Deputy Director Lisa Robinson and CHDS doctoral student Mike Eber coauthored a recent working paper, The Benefits and Costs of U.S. Employer COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates with Global Health and Population colleagues Maddalena Ferranna, Daniel Cadarette, and David Bloom, which evaluates the direct costs and health-related benefits of the four largest U.S. employer vaccination mandates.

The research first estimates the change in vaccination rates resulting from the mandates and then uses an epidemiological model to quantify the impact of the mandates on the health and longevity of the U.S. population under different assumptions regarding the future course of the pandemic.

Based on this analysis, the investigators conclude that the net benefits of the mandates depend heavily on the course of the pandemic, which was not known to policymakers at the time the mandates were implemented. In scenarios where a novel, more transmissible variant (similar to the Omicron variant) emerges, the net benefits of the mandates reach more than $16,000 per additional vaccinated individual, and over 20,000 deaths are averted. In scenarios involving a fading pandemic, the mandates’ benefits are unlikely to exceed their costs because existing population immunity provides enough protection. Thus, mandates may be most useful when the consequences of inaction are catastrophic. However, the investigators 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.

Learn more: Read the published version of the paper in Risk Analysis (winner of the 2023 Risk Analysis Best Paper Award)
Learn more: Read the publication, Valuing COVID-19 Morbidity Risk Reductions