Study links iPhone rollout to decline in US birth rates
Study links iPhone rollout to decline in US birth rates
Publish Date: 2026-06-09 16:49:00
Source Domain: www.theregister.com
personal tech
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 found that women aged 15–19 in counties with access to the iPhone through AT&T saw birth rates fall by as much as 8 percent during the study period, while those aged 20–24 experienced declines of up to 6.6 percent. Older age groups also showed “statistically significant but smaller declines,” according to the paper. Myers argues the findings point to more than a simple correlation.
“It’s pretty much undeniable that births fell faster in places with AT&T coverage,” Myers told The Register in an email. “As a scientist, I’m loath to ever say causality is ‘proven’ … but I would say that we’ve identified a compelling natural experiment and that it strongly points to a large and causal relationship between iPhones and fertility.”
Compared to counties with dominant Verizon and Sprint coverage, which only began to receive Android devices in 2009 per the paper, there was no effect on fertility related to the iPhone release. Myers…
