Has COVID-19 vaccination success increased the marginal willingness to pay taxes?
Durán-Cabré J. M., Rizzo L., Esteller-Moré A., Secomandi R., 2025 – Fiscal Studies
The COVID-19 pandemic has tested the ability of public administrations to respond rapidly, coordinate effectively, and communicate transparently. In a context of uncertainty, the perception of a successful public response may influence citizens’ willingness to contribute to public expenditure.
In the article “Has COVID-19 vaccination success increased the marginal willingness to pay taxes?”, published in Fiscal Studies, José María Durán-Cabré, Leonzio Rizzo, Alejandro Esteller-Moré, and Riccardo Secomandi investigate whether the vaccination campaign in Spain affected citizens’ willingness to pay higher taxes. Spain provides an ideal quasi-experimental setting to examine this relationship. The vaccination campaign, launched at the end of 2020, followed a strictly age-based and nationally mandated prioritisation scheme. Older individuals were vaccinated first, while younger groups had to wait several months before completing their vaccination cycle.
Four survey waves were conducted between May 2020 and December 2021. These surveys included a specific question allowing respondents to be classified according to their willingness to pay more or fewer taxes relative to their own income (Marginal Willingness to Pay Taxes, MWTP). The MWTP variable ranges from –1 to +3: –1 for respondents wishing to reduce taxation even at the cost of lower public services and social benefits; 0 for those considering the current level of taxation and services adequate; +1 for individuals willing to contribute more, paying less than 5% of their income to improve public service provision; +2 for those willing to contribute between 6% and 10%; and +3 for individuals willing to contribute more than 10%.
The authors employ a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) framework with a continuous treatment, where treatment intensity is measured by the percentage of vaccinated individuals in each age group and region. To reduce the risk that structural differences across respondents drive the results, the analysis focuses specifically on individuals aged 60 to 79. The model includes a set of control variables such as provincial COVID-19 deaths per capita, as well as provincial and time fixed effects.
The estimated coefficient of vaccination coverage on MWTP is positive and statistically significant at the 1% level. The impact of vaccination on MWTP is measured using the average difference in vaccination coverage between the 70–79 age group and the 60–69 group (i.e., 73.5 percentage points). This difference implies an increase in MWTP between 0.747 and 0.769. This is a sizeable effect, given that the average MWTP for these two age groups is 0.365. The robustness of the result is assessed by progressively expanding the sample to include additional age groups. Moreover, a standard DiD using a dummy variable for the vaccination rollout—equal to 1 for respondents aged over 70 (treated) and 0 otherwise (control)—confirms the findings. Placebo tests also show no significant effects, reinforcing the causal interpretation.
The authors conclude that the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Spain can be regarded as a visible and successful response by public authorities to a major health threat. This policy increased the MWTP among individuals belonging to age groups that exhibited higher vaccination coverage at the time of the survey. Thus, effective public governance can strengthen citizens’ trust in government and, in turn, foster a greater willingness to contribute to the common good (in this case, safeguarding public health) through tax payments.
The Spanish case offers relevant insights for Italian policymakers. The relationship between institutional trust and tax behaviour is particularly salient in Italy, a country characterised by sizeable levels of tax evasion, a consistently lower-than-average trust in public institutions compared to other European countries, and significant territorial disparities in perceived service quality. For a country like Italy, the “Spanish lesson” may serve as a valuable reminder: enhancing the perceived quality of public action can represent a powerful fiscal policy instrument—potentially more effective than new sanctions, compliance measures, or more complex audit procedures.