Timely vaccination dips as mom's education rises

By Amy Norton

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Young children whose mothers have college educations and higher incomes are less likely to be up-to-date with routine vaccinations than children with mothers with less education and lower incomes, a new study suggests.

Using data for nearly 12,000 U.S. children between the ages of 19 and 35 months, researchers found that those whose mothers had less than a high school education were 16 percent more likely to be up-to-date with their immunizations than children whose mothers were college graduates.

When the researchers looked at race alone, Hispanic children more often had timely vaccinations than either white or black children. And when they factored in income, Hispanic and black children from the poorest families had the highest rates of timely vaccination.

The findings, published in the American Journal of Public Health, contradict the patterns often seen in health studies -- namely, that education and higher income mean better healthcare access and more services.

The results are somewhat surprising, Dr. Jennie J. Kronenfeld, the study's senior author, told Reuters Health.

Cultural factors could play a role, according to Kronenfeld, a professor of sociology at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Latino families, she noted, place particularly strong value on their children's well-being, and even if parents are less likely to receive routine healthcare, they often make sure their children do.

In addition, less-educated, low-income parents often have their children's immunizations paid for by Medicaid and other government programs. And the federal nutrition program, Women, Infants and Children (WIC), requires that children be up-to-date with their shots for families to receive assistance.

The findings are based on 11,860 families who took part in the National Immunization Survey in 2003. Overall, 9,510 children were up-to-date with their immunizations, while 2,350 were not.

With race, income and other factors all considered, mothers' education still seemed to influence the likelihood of timely vaccination.

It's also possible, according to Kronenfeld, that college-educated women are more likely to have read articles questioning vaccine safety or at least heard about such controversies.

However, she said, that's impossible to determine since the survey did not ask mothers about their attitudes toward immunizations.

SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, February 2007.