The birth rate in the United States has hit historic lows. In fact, the country’s rate has been “below replacement fertility since 2007,” according to GovFacts. Now, scientists at the National Bureau of Economic Research believe they have found the reason for the decline: the iPhone.
When the iPhone launched in 2007 and until 2011, AT&T was the only carrier for the phone. The researchers used this “to isolate an iPhone-specific channel” and compared birth rates in areas with a high AT&T customer base to areas where competitors such as Verizon were stronger.
The study’s results show a correlation between iPhone users and the decline in birth rates, particularly in the 15- to 19- and 20- to 24-year-old age groups. Birth rates fell in the 15- to 19-year-old age group to 8 percent, and to 6.6 percent in the 20- to 24-year-old age group. Those were 4.5 and 3.2 percent decreases, respectively, compared to the control groups.
“The diffusion of the iPhone explains 33-52 percent of the decline in the general fertility rate among women aged 15-44,” according to the study.
Some factors to consider from the study: AT&T’s customer base during the studied period was primarily urban, well-educated, and on average, white. Also, the researchers themselves note that the birth rate in the youngest age groups had already been declining before 2007, stabilized for a few years around that time, and then continued to fall.
Based on these developments, one could also come to a different conclusion: The rise of the iPhone, or smartphones in general, is more of a symptom than a cause of increasing urbanization in the U.S. and worldwide.
“We do not claim that the iPhone is the sole cause of the post-2007 decline,” the reports concludes. “But over the 2008–2011 window that our design identifies, our estimates imply that the introduction of the modern smartphone played a sizable role in the decline in U.S. births.”
This article originally appeared on our sister publication Macwelt and was translated and localized from German.
