The parent-reported COVID-19 vaccination rate for youth ages 12-18 has very slightly risen from 54% in September 2021 to 57% in January 2022.
● The parent-reported COVID-19 vaccination rate for kids ages 5-11 has increased from 27% in November 2021 to 36% in January 2022.
● However, the rise of the Omicron variant over the winter holiday season does not appear to increase the reported likelihood that parents would vaccinate their children against COVID-19; if anything, likelihood of vaccinating kids under 12 decreased between November 2021 and January 2022.1
● Parental vaccination likelihood for youth ages 12-18 increased from September to November 2021, then stabilized from November 2021 to December 2022 at just over two-thirds of parents expressing likelihood.
● Partisan gaps have increased from September 2021 to January 2022 - in all child age groups, this gap has widened to over 30 percentage points in the most recent wave.
● Parents of kids under 5 report the lowest percent likelihood of vaccinating their kids: only 54% of parents with kids under 5 said they would likely vaccinate their children against COVID-19.
● Significant demographic differences emerge among parental likelihood of vaccinating their kids against COVID-19; these relative cross-subgroup differences roughly hold for all childhood age groups.
1 Vaccination likelihood is measured via the response to two questions: 1) whether the parent said vaccinating their kids against COVID-19 was somewhat likely or very likely, and 2) whether the parent said their kids already received at least one vaccine against COVID-19. If they said it was likely or that they had already vaccinated their kids at least once, the parents were coded as “likely” to vaccinate their kids.