U.S. Kindergarten MMR Vaccination and Exemption Rates, 2016–2024

National MMR coverage declined from 96.0% in 2018–2019 to 92.7% in 2023–2024, while exemption rates increased from 2.5% to 3.3%. Diego R. Hijano analyzed 8 years of CDC kindergarten vaccination surveillance data to assess state-level trends and the association between exemptions and coverage. Updated 2024–2025 estimates indicate coverage remained near 92.5% and exemption rates increased to 3.6%.

Use Cases

• Analyze state-level trends in MMR vaccination coverage based on 8 years of CDC surveillance data.
• Model the association between non-medical exemption prevalence and vaccination coverage based on the described cross-sectional regression.
• Compare vaccination outcomes between states with broad versus restrictive exemption policies based on the results mentioning Idaho and Alaska.

Strengths

• Covers 8 years of data from the 2016–2017 through 2023–2024 school years.
• Includes a cross-sectional analysis of 39 jurisdictions for the 2024–2025 period.
• Quantifies a specific association: each 1% increase in exemption prevalence was associated with an approximately 1.1 percentage-point decrease in MMR coverage.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The primary data file is a 26.1 KB DOCX document, suggesting a limited scope of underlying data.

Provenance

Source

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) kindergarten vaccination surveillance data.

Collection Method

Descriptive analyses, scatterplots, and a cross-sectional state-level linear regression model.

Time Range

2016–2017 through 2024–2025 school years.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-30 05:38:46; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United States, with state-level/jurisdiction-level detail.