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. 2025 Jul-Aug;47(7-8):335-345.
doi: 10.1177/01640275251319325. Epub 2025 Feb 19.

Offspring Education and Parents' COVID-19 Vaccination

Jaycob Applegate  1 , Jenjira Yahirun  1
Affiliations

Offspring Education and Parents' COVID-19 Vaccination

Jaycob Applegate et al. Res Aging. 2025 Jul-Aug.

Abstract

Studies on COVID-19 vaccine uptake often focus on individual characteristics; however, fewer studies have assessed how the characteristics of family members might matter for vaccine decisions. This study employs a "social foreground" perspective to ask how the resources of adult children are associated with COVID-19 vaccine uptake among older adult parents. Using data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (N = 8086), we find that having a most-educated child who completes college is positively associated with parents' vaccine uptake when compared to having a most-educated child who did not complete college. This association is driven by respondents who themselves have a high school education or less, supporting resource substitution theory. Findings from this study extend the social foreground perspective to offer new insight into the health behaviors of older adults during pandemics.

Keywords: COVID-19; education; family; health behaviors; intergenerational relationships; linked lives.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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