Study links iPhone rollout to decline in US birth rates
personal tech
If your sex life is dead, you can blame Steve Jobs
Economists find signs of a ‘large and causal relationship between iPhones and fertility' in AT&T exclusivity-era data
If your phone is too compelling, your sex life might not be. American birth rates have been declining for nearly two decades now, and researchers believe they’ve identified a potential new culprit: The iPhone.
That’s right: A National Bureau of Economic Research working paper examines AT&T mobile broadband coverage from the iPhone’s 2007 launch until the company lost carrier exclusivity in 2011. Comparing birth rates across counties and controlling for confounding factors, the authors concluded that access to the iPhone reduced births, particularly among younger women.
The data, Middlebury College Economics professor and NBER researcher Caitlin Myers and Middlebury graduate Ezekiel Hooper wrote in their paper,suggests that iPhone access caused significant birth rate decreases across age groups. The authors...
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