Older People are Less Pessimistic about the Health Risks of Covid-19

Pedro Bordalo, Katherine B. Coffman, Nicola Gennaioli, Andrei Shleifer

NBER Working Paper No. 27494
Issued in July 2020
NBER Program(s):Health Economics

A central question for understanding behaviour during the Covid-19 pandemic, at both the individual and collective levels, is how people perceive the health and economic risks they face. We conducted a survey of over 1,500 Americans from May 6 – 13, 2020, to understand these risk perceptions. Here we report some preliminary results. Our most striking finding is that perceived personal health risks associated with Covid-19 fall sharply with age.

Acknowledgments

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w27494