5 million Americans were surveyed by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
A new paper surveying public attitudes to Covid-19 vaccines has found PhDs are the most vaccine hesitant educational group in the US.
The first five months of 2021 saw a steady decrease in vaccine hesitancy among those with “high school or less” education, whilst hesitancy among those with PhDs slightly increased to 23.9 percent in the same period, lifting them above those with “some college” or “high school or less” education in the hesitancy stakes.
Unherd reports that “the association between hesitancy and education level follows a U-shaped curve with the highest hesitancy among those least and most educated.”
“People with a master’s degree had the least hesitancy, and the highest hesitancy was among those holding a PhD.”
The paper also found a correlation between counties with higher numbers of Trump voters and higher rates of vaccine hesitancy.
Hesitancy overall dropped by one third between January and May, but some 90 million Americans who are eligible for the shots remain unvaccinated.
To define the term “vaccine hesitancy”, researchers asked participants if they would take a vaccine offered today – those who responded “definitely not” and “probably not” were labelled hesitant.
18-24 year olds were the most hesitant age group, with black people and Pacific Islanders seeing the largest decreases in vaccine hesitancy.
White people were more vaccine hesitant than Hispanics, Asians, black people and Pacific Islanders by May.
Whilst the number of people saying they would “probably not” get vaccinated has declined, the number who responded “definitely not” has remained constant, with most claiming they did not trust the injection or the government.
The CDC estimates that almost 50 percent of the US population has been vaccinated against Covid-19 since August 5.