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The Conservative Party has a problem with young people. In the last general election, less than one in six under-25s voted for Boris Johnson, and the pandemic is unlikely to have helped matters.
While it is true that older people are most at risk of contracting and dying from Covid-19, the economic cost has been highest for teens and people in their twenties. It is young people, whose jobs are disproportionately concentrated in the retail and hospitality sectors, who have been most likely to be put on leave or to have their roles laid off.
It was not just young workers who suffered. The closure of schools has had a negative impact on the mental health and educational attainment of children, especially those from less well-off households. The students have paid a high price for college which includes all the hard work without any of the common rite of passage experiences that make it fun.
All in all, young people have been pretty good kid on this. They are willing to make personal sacrifices to protect grandmother and grandfather even though the odds of them dying from Covid-19 were – and remain – low.
If this patience is waning now, it is hardly surprising. The government promised that when Grandma and Grandpa were vaccinated – as they are now – restrictions would be lifted and young people could party for the first time in 18 months.
Now ministers are making plans for vaccine passports, which will give bouncers at club gates yet another reason to deny access, as in: “Sorry, you weren’t double stung, so I can’t tell you. to let in.”
The message to young people is that they will have only themselves to blame for the new restrictions as vaccine uptake is low, and the alternative is to shut down clubs altogether. In fact, the alternative is a properly functioning testing, tracing, and isolation system, but in the meantime young people are making practical scapegoats for government failures.
That said, there is certainly a gap between the ages of the vaccine. Bite rates are well over 90% for people aged 70 and over, but only about two-thirds of people under 30 have received at least one dose of protection.
Other countries are facing the same problem and are also showing a willingness to toughen up. There has been a sharp rise in the number of people making appointments in France after Emmanuel Macron said trains, bars and shopping malls would be banned for unvaccinated people from August, but the move has also resulted in large protests.
In the United States, Joe Biden said federal employees who refuse to be vaccinated will need to undergo regular coronavirus testing.
In all three countries – the UK, France and the US – the fear is that vaccination rates may not be high enough to ensure infection rates remain low as nights get longer and longer. as the weather turns cold. Governments are terrified of having to reimpose closures this fall and are therefore increasing the pressure on the unvaccinated.
Biden, however, uses carrots as well as sticks. The White House is calling on individual states to use its stimulus money to give $ 100 (£ 72) to every unstung American who shows up for the shot.
As the President accepted, this approach has its drawbacks, including the fact that those who have already come forward may see it wrong to get nothing while the refusniks are rewarded financially.
The economic case for Biden’s initiative, however, is much stronger. Incentives affect behavior, which is why governments use the tax system to trick companies into doing things they might not otherwise do, like investing in research and development or buying new machinery.
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A payment of $ 100 will not be enough to entice all unvaccinated Americans to come forward, as it is clear that many people will not be convinced of the benefits, no matter how big the incentive. But some will be incentivized, and if the incentive persuades enough to get stung, it will be money well spent, as the cost of payments would be far outweighed by the dislocation caused by a new foreclosure. Limiting checks to previously unvaccinated people poses political problems, but is financially efficient because it avoids the “deadweight” costs – payments to get people to do something they would have done anyway.
Something similar would be achievable in the UK at relatively low cost. There are about 10 million people between the ages of 18 and 30, of whom a third – say 3 million – have not yet been vaccinated. A one-time payment of £ 100 to each of them would cost Rishi Sunak £ 300m – chicken feed compared to the £ 300bn the state borrowed last year following the lockdowns. The Chancellor intends to save £ 4bn by temporarily suspending the triple lockdown on pensions this year and could comfortably fund vaccine payments from the savings, while making a political statement.
The government appears to be moving in that direction, with young people being offered discounts on taxi rides and take-out if they show up for the shot. Direct payments would be a much stronger incentive.
While urging young people to get bitten, Johnson and Sunak are considering an increase in national insurance contributions that will worsen intergenerational inequalities by forcing young people to pay for social care from their grandparents. Since NI is not paid by those over the statutory retirement age, the immediate beneficiaries of the new levy will not have to contribute. If the Prime Minister is serious about wooing voters under 25, here’s a little advice for him: try more carrot and less stick.
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