The Cost of Vaccines

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I recommend you vaccinate your children. I just had a philosophical thought, which is that very hard to be cold and calculating about our children. We have lots of fears that haunt us, worries, anxieties, concerns. And it feels like life or death. But I do think particularly in these realms of sort of parenting and kind of choices people make about their health or the health of their kids, the evidence is often very limited and not as good as you would like it.

Economist and author Emily Oster of Brown University talks about her book Cribsheet with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Oster explores what the data and evidence can tell us about parenting in areas such as breastfeeding, sleep habits, discipline, vaccination, and food allergies. Oster often finds that commonly held views on some of these topics are not well supported by the evidence while on others, the evidence appears decisive. Oster thoughtfully explores the challenges of using empirical work and balances our sometimes ignorance with common sense.