Historical trends · US-focused estimates

Autism diagnoses & vaccination coverage

Blue line: reported autism diagnosis rate. Red line: childhood vaccination coverage. Both rose after mid-century — for very different reasons. Explore the dual-axis chart and the milestones that reshape how each series is read.

Autism diagnosis rateVaccination coverage

Autism · 2025

1 in 31

32.5 per 1,000

Vaccines · 2025

93%

Childhood series coverage

Autism · 2000

1 in 149

First CDC ADDM estimate

Pre-1943 autism

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Diagnosis did not exist

Blue = autism diagnoses per 1,000 children (left axis). Red = estimated childhood vaccine coverage % (right axis). Hover the chart for exact values.

Timeline milestones

  • 1943Autism first described

    Leo Kanner publishes the first clinical description of infantile autism.

  • 1955Polio vaccine

    Salk polio vaccine begins mass US immunization; childhood coverage rises sharply.

  • 1963Measles vaccine

    Measles vaccine licensed in the US; later combined into MMR (1971).

  • 1980DSM-III

    Autism enters formal psychiatric diagnostic criteria as a distinct category.

  • 1994DSM-IV

    Broader autism spectrum criteria (Asperger’s, PDD-NOS) expand who qualifies.

  • 1998Wakefield paper

    Fraudulent Lancet paper links MMR to autism; fully retracted in 2010.

  • 2000CDC ADDM begins

    Systematic US surveillance of autism prevalence among 8-year-olds starts.

  • 2013DSM-5

    Autism spectrum disorder unified under one diagnosis with severity levels.

How to read this chart

  • Two different units. Dual-axis mode plots autism per 1,000 children (left) against vaccine coverage % (right). Parallel lines on a dual axis do not prove one causes the other.
  • Autism rose on paper. Diagnostic criteria expanded (DSM-III → IV → 5), screening improved, awareness grew, and services often require a diagnosis. CDC ADDM is the gold standard only from ~2000 on.
  • Vaccines rose earlier. Polio (1955), measles (1963), and later schedules drove coverage from near-zero modern series toward ~90%+ long before the steepest autism diagnosis climb (post-1990s).
  • Correlation is not causation. Large epidemiological studies have not found a causal link between vaccines and autism. The 1998 Wakefield MMR paper was fraudulent and retracted.

Data are approximate historical reconstructions for education and visualization — not medical advice. Autism series draws on CDC ADDM (2000–2022) and earlier literature estimates; vaccination series approximates US childhood core-series coverage from historical immunization literature and NIS-era surveys.