COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in 53 Developing Countries : Levels, Trends, and Reasons for Hesitancy

This paper presents new evidence on the levels and trends of vaccine hesitancy in developing countries based on harmonized high-frequency phone surveys from more than 120,000 respondents in 53 low- and middle-income countries. These countries represent a combined 30 percent of the population of low- and middle-income countries. On average across countries, one in five adults is hesitant about the COVID-19 vaccine, with the most cited reasons for hesitancy being concerns about the safety of the vaccine, followed by concerns about its efficacy. Between late 2020 and the first half of 2021, there tended to be little change in levels of hesitancy except in Iraq, Malawi, and Uzbekistan, where hesitancy increased. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is higher among female, young, less educated, and rural respondents, after controlling for selected observable characteristics. Country estimates of vaccine hesitancy from the high-frequency phone surveys are correlated with but lower than those from earlier studies, which often relied on less representative survey samples. The results suggest that vaccine hesitancy in developing countries, while less prevalent than previously thought, will be an important and enduring obstacle to recovery from the pandemic