It's a type of externality problem. By not getting your kids immunized you raise the risk of other kids dying horribly of a preventable disease. But the kicker is you do lower the risk of your kids dying from complications from the vaccine -- which *does* happen, although at a much lower rate than the anti-vaccination crowd thinks. Of course, if your kid gets the disease for which s/he wasn't vaccinated, there's a roughly 1000 times higher of permanent damage as an after-effect of disease than of vaccination. But *if* herd immunity is high, it's a rational tactic to dump the risk on other people's children.
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Of course, if your kid gets the disease for which s/he wasn't vaccinated, there's a roughly 1000 times higher of permanent damage as an after-effect of disease than of vaccination. But *if* herd immunity is high, it's a rational tactic to dump the risk on other people's children.