Anti-vaxxers tend to congregate in urban centers, creating anti-vaccination hotspots in cities like Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Houston and Kansas City.

This has been true throughout history. In the 19th century, when the smallpox epidemic was raging across the country, anti-vaccination movements sprang up amongst the educated middle class in cities like Boston and Minneapolis.

It seems counterintuitive. We’d like to think that, along with an education, you gain an understanding of how vaccines work — or, at least, a certain respect for the medical experts who are recommending them. And polls have indeed shown that anti-vaccine views are inversely correlated with education levels.
But according to Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, especially in urban areas, anti-vaxxers tend to be more affluent. They also come from regions of the country with the highest education rates, like college and tech towns. These anti-vaxxers have better access to the internet and more time to visit websites and chatrooms that already align with their belief system. Online and in books, they can find plenty of fuel to feed their fire. Amazon and Facebook, says Hotez, are some of the biggest providers of false information and anti-vaccination books.

ARTURS BUDKEVICS / MCT ​​​​​​If you’re against vaccinating your child, there’s a good chance you’re a college-educated white woman making decent money.

The rebel forces in America’s latest culture war — the so-called anti-vaxxers — are often described as middle- and upper-class women who breast-feed their children, shop at Whole Foods, endlessly scour the web for vaccine-related conversation, and believe that their thinking supersedes that of doctors. Typically their families earn more than $75,000 a year.