Why did Brazil fail to vaccinate children against COVID-19 during the pandemic? An assessment of attitudinal and behavioral determinants.

The objective of this study is to identify the determining attitudinal, behavioral, and sociodemographic factors behind the vaccination decision of parents and guardians in Brazil regarding immunization of children against COVID-19. Our data is obtained from a national online survey of 1,872 parents or guardians of children between 5 and 11 years of age, conducted from May 16 to 25, 2022. Our results show that, in Brazil, the decision to vaccinate children against COVID-19 is better explained by attitudinal and behavioral factors than sociodemographic ones. More precisely, the choice to immunize children against COVID-19 is strongly associated with the parents or guardians' own COVID-19 vaccination status, their ambivalence regarding this decision, their political preferences, and media use. In particular, parents and guardians who did not vaccinate against SARSCov2 and who supported former president Jair Bolsonaro (the main anti-vaccine political leader in the country during the COVID-19 pandemic) were substantially less likely to vaccinate their children. Parents and guardians with greater exposure to the country's major TV news program (Jornal Nacional/TV Globo), however, were more likely to do so. Other findings show that evangelicals - whose religious leaders strongly supported the former president -, young parents and guardians, and those from lower economic status were also less likely to vaccinate their children.