I'm posting this paper because poor medical communication this year has resulted in a distrust in science. To improve vaccine uptake we need to understand what works and what doesn't.

Increasing Vaccination: Putting Psychological Science Into

Vaccination is one of the great achievements of the 20th century, yet persistent public-health problems include inadequate, delayed, and unstable vaccination uptake.
Psychology offers three general propositions for understanding and intervening to increase uptake where vaccines are available and affordable. The first proposition is that thoughts and feelings can motivate getting vaccinated.
Hundreds of studies have shown that risk beliefs and anticipated regret about infectious disease correlate reliably with getting vaccinated; low confidence in vaccine effectiveness and concern about safety correlate reliably with not getting vaccinated.
We were surprised to find that few randomized trials have successfully changed what people think and feel about vaccines, and those few that succeeded were minimally effective in increasing uptake. The second proposition is that social processes can motivate getting vaccinated.
Substantial research has shown that social norms are associated with vaccination, but few interventions examined whether normative messages increase vaccination uptake. Many experimental studies have relied on hypothetical scenarios to demonstrate that altruism and free riding
(i.e., taking advantage of the protection provided by others) can affect intended behavior, but few randomized trials have tested strategies to change social processes to increase vaccination uptake.
The third proposition is that interventions can facilitate vaccination directly by leveraging, but not trying to change, what people think and feel. These interventions are by far the most plentiful and effective in the literature. To increase vaccine uptake, these interventions
build on existing favorable intentions by facilitating action (through reminders, prompts, and primes) and reducing barriers (through logistics and healthy defaults); these interventions also shape behavior (through incentives, sanctions, and requirements).
Although identification of principles for changing thoughts and feelings to motivate vaccination is a work in progress, psychological principles can now inform the design of systems and policies to directly facilitate action.

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This is a piece I've been thinking about for a long time. One of the most dominant policy ideas in Washington is that policy should, always and everywhere, move parents into paid labor. But what if that's wrong?

My reporting here convinced me that there's no large effect in either direction on labor force participation from child allowances. Canada has a bigger one than either Romney or Biden are considering, and more labor force participation among women.

But what if that wasn't true?

Forcing parents into low-wage, often exploitative, jobs by threatening them and their children with poverty may be counted as a success by some policymakers, but it’s a sign of a society that doesn’t value the most essential forms of labor.

The problem is in the very language we use. If I left my job as a New York Times columnist to care for my 2-year-old son, I’d be described as leaving the labor force. But as much as I adore him, there is no doubt I’d be working harder. I wouldn't have stopped working!

I tried to render conservative objections here fairly. I appreciate that @swinshi talked with me, and I'm sorry I couldn't include everything he said. I'll say I believe I used his strongest arguments, not more speculative ones, in the piece.

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