Coverage of rising U.S. measles cases is often coupled with news about Americans\u2019 declining confidence in vaccines.<\/p>\n
Scientists are quick to differentiate between correlation \u2014 when two things are related but not necessarily dependent on one another \u2014\u00a0and causation, when one thing causes another.<\/p>\n
But when it comes to vaccine trust and vaccination rates, data shows in the U.S., parents are less likely to fully vaccinate their kids when their beliefs call into question whether vaccines are safe, effective or necessary.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a correlation there,\u201d said Lunna Lopes, a senior survey manager at the health policy research group KFF. \u201cThat relationship remains significant even when we control for factors like age, education and partisanship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Falling vaccination rates have predictable consequences. Cases of measles \u2014 a disease\u00a0declared \u201celiminated\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in the U.S. in 2000 \u2014 have been rising in\u00a0recent years<\/a>. The U.S. has already\u00a0reported nearly 500 more cases<\/a>\u00a0of measles in the first eight months of 2026 than in all of 2025, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.<\/p>\n The exact factors driving upticks in such vaccine-preventable illnesses aren\u2019t easy to pin down, but here are five charts that tell some of the story.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tUnited States vaccination trends\u00a0<\/p>\n During the 2025-26 school year, there was a 0.1% overall drop in vaccination coverage among students entering kindergarten, the CDC\u00a0reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n The decline follows an overall trend of falling vaccination coverage among kindergartners that has been largely consistent regardless of the type of vaccine since the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Even small percentage declines leave thousands of children unprotected,\u00a0health experts<\/a>\u00a0say. For the 2025-26 school year,\u00a0about 280,000<\/a>\u00a0kindergartners attended school without documented completion of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine series, or MMR, for example.<\/p>\n Robin Mejia, a biostatistics professor at the University of Washington\u2019s School of Public Health, said the nation\u2019s 0.1% overall vaccination decline doesn\u2019t hit every place evenly.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s going to be huge drops in some regions and in some school districts, and hardly any drops in others,\u201d Mejia said. \u201cThat\u2019s what allows things like measles to spread.\u201d<\/p>\n CDC data showed that during the 2025-26 school year, a growing share of parents requested their children be permitted to attend school without being fully vaccinated.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Requests for exemptions from vaccine requirements for medical reasons have remained relatively consistent for years, but requests for non-medical exemptions have increased consistently since the 2020-21 school year.<\/p>\n During the same period, the overall percentage of children vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella generally decreased.<\/p>\n Epidemiologists say 95% of people need to receive the MMR vaccine to achieve\u00a0herd immunity<\/a>,\u00a0preventing community transmission<\/a>. During the 2025-26 school year, just 10 states were at or above that threshold.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n So far in 2026, there have been over\u00a02,700 measles<\/a>\u00a0cases<\/a>\u00a0in the U.S. In 94% of those cases, the person was unvaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown, the\u00a0CDC reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2025, two school-aged\u00a0children<\/a>\u00a0and one adult\u00a0died of measles<\/a>. All were unvaccinated.<\/p>\n On Aug. 25, authorities\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0\u201ctwo measles-associated deaths\u201d in unvaccinated people in Pennsylvania. One was a newborn who a coroner said died of an internal hemorrhage and traumatic spleen rupture; the coroner found evidence of the measles virus in the baby\u2019s lung tissue, but it\u2019s\u00a0unclear exactly<\/a>\u00a0what role the measles infection played in the death.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tBelief in falsehoods about vaccines is linked to decisions to delay, skip them\u00a0<\/p>\n Since 2015, the\u00a0Vaccine Confidence Project<\/a>\u00a0has found that support for statements such as \u201cvaccines are safe\u201d and \u201cvaccines are compatible with my beliefs\u201d has fluctuated.<\/p>\n As of 2023, belief in the statements \u201cvaccines are important for children to have,\u201d \u201cvaccines are safe,\u201d and \u201cvaccines are effective\u201d had fallen compared with 2015.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult to say exactly what role vaccine myths and falsehoods ultimately play in vaccination decisions, but in May 2026, KFF\u00a0found<\/a>\u00a0correlation between parents reporting belief in false statements about vaccines and their decisions to skip or delay some vaccines.<\/p>\n