Feb 1, 2023
Amid controversies around the COVID-19 vaccine and growing distrust of public health authorities, more than four in ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, and a third of parents, now say they oppose requiring children in public schools to receive some childhood vaccines, up since 2019, a new KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor survey finds. Overall, nearly three in ten adults (28%) nationally now say that parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate their children for measles, mumps, and rubella rather than those vaccinations being required to attend public schools, up from 16% in a 2019 Pew Research Center poll conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic. Among parents, opposition to requiring those childhood vaccines now stands at 35%, up from 23% in 2019. While most of the public still say that healthy children should be required to get those vaccines to attend public schools (71%), that share is down from 82% in 2019. The growing opposition stems largely from shifts among p
