We use cookies to provide you with the best possible website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site, as well as cookies used for anonymous statistics, comfort settings, or displaying personalized content. You can decide which categories you want to allow. Please note that depending on your settings, some features of the website may not be available.

Cookie settings

These necessary cookies are required to enable the core functionality of the website. Opting out of these cookies is not possible.

cb-enable
This cookie stores the user's cookie consent status for the current domain. Expiry: 1 year.
laravel_session
Stores the session ID to recognize the user when the page reloads and to restore their login session. Expiry: 2 hours.
XSRF-TOKEN
Provides CSRF protection for forms. Expiry: 2 hours.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 19010
October 2026
3G Internet and Information Frictions in Childhood Vaccination: Evidence from India
Stepan Mikula, Marcella Nicolini, Fabio Sabatini

Childhood vaccination rates often fall over the course of the immunization schedule. We study whether local mobile internet coverage reduces this decline, using data on about 113,000 children from India's National Family Health Survey (2019--21) matched to georeferenced maps of 3G network coverage. To address the non-random placement of 3G networks, we instrument coverage with terrain ruggedness, which raises the cost of deploying and maintaining network infrastructure. Comparing clusters within the same district, we find that 3G coverage has no detectable effect on the doses due in the first year of life but increases receipt of the doses due at 16--24 months. The effect emerges when children reach the age at which these doses become due. In a within-child design comparing earlier and later vaccinations of the same child, which removes all factors that affect both vaccinations equally, 3G coverage raises completion of the 16--24-month stage of the schedule but not of earlier stages. Taken together, the results point to information and coordination frictions as one barrier to completing vaccination in the second year of life.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer-ext@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

About IZA@LISER Network
Contact
IZA@LISER NETWORK (Current Site Operator):

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
11, Porte des Sciences
Maison des Sciences Humaines
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval, Luxembourg

IZA Institute (In Liquidation):

Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH i. L.
Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 5-9, 53113 Bonn. Germany
Phone: +49 228 3894-0 | Fax: +49 228 3894-510
E-Mail: info@iza.org | Web: www.iza.org
Represented by: Martin T. Clemens (Liquidator)