Overview
- A National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Middlebury’s Caitlin Myers and Ezekiel Hooper uses variation in AT&T’s 2007–2011 iPhone coverage as a natural experiment and estimates smartphones explain roughly 33–52% of the U.S. fertility drop from 2007 to 2011, with the largest effects for people aged 15–24.
- A University of Cincinnati analysis of World Bank data across 128 countries finds teenage fertility fell faster after smartphones and high-speed internet became widespread, producing similar timing patterns outside the United States.
- Media coverage this week highlighted the studies and noted official data showing U.S. birth rates at record lows, citing a 2025 CDC figure of about 53 births per 1,000 women aged 15–44 to place the research in current context.
- Demographers and clinicians caution the findings do not prove smartphones are the sole cause, pointing to long-term forces such as education, urbanization, later childbearing, rising child costs, falling marriage rates, and changes in fertility treatment access as major drivers.
- Methodological critics say the AT&T rollout may not have been random and contemporaneous shocks like the 2008 recession could confound results, so researchers call for replication, more granular behavioral data, and study of how effects vary by age and place before policy action is taken.