Journalist Zaid Jilani discussed Brazil’s vaccination payment program on Monday and how a similar approach could influence more Americans to get inoculated against COVID-19.
During an appearance on Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Jilani detailed Brazil’s Bolsa Familia program, in which poor families receive financial aid for participating in prosocial behavior like getting their children vaccinations or sending them to school.
He commented on how this could help the U.S.’s upcoming COVID-19 vaccination effort to entice people to get immunized with money in order for the country to reach herd immunity. He noted that the current strategy of having former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush get vaccinated on camera is “fine.”
“But we might need to go the extra step here and actually get people, particularly in a down economy, a financial incentive to do this as well,” he said.
“We know that the more money you get into the hands of working class people, lower-income people, the more money they’re spending on basic goods and the better it is for the economy,” he added. “So it seems like a win-win here to do something similar here in the United States.”
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