Overview
- The National Bureau of Economic Research working paper published Monday uses the iPhone’s 2007–2011 exclusive sale on AT&T as a natural experiment and finds that smartphone diffusion explains roughly 33–52% of the drop in the U.S. general fertility rate since 2007.
- The NBER study estimates births fell 4.5–8.0% for women aged 15–19 and 3.2–6.6% for ages 20–24 where early iPhone access expanded faster, with smaller but significant declines for older cohorts.
- The paper identifies effects by mapping county-level AT&T mobile broadband coverage and reports null placebo tests using Verizon and Sprint footprints to strengthen the causal claim.
- Authors cite national survey evidence that early smartphone use reduced face-to-face time, raised online sexual-content consumption, and lowered sexual frequency, but they say those mechanisms remain correlational and need further testing.
- If the findings hold up, they reshape how demographers and policymakers think about falling birthrates and could affect planning for schools, labor markets, and social supports as younger cohorts delay or forgo childbearing.