{"id":268746,"date":"2026-06-09T16:49:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T20:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/09\/study-links-iphone-rollout-to-decline-in-us-birth-rates\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T17:50:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T21:50:14","slug":"study-links-iphone-rollout-to-decline-in-us-birth-rates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/09\/study-links-iphone-rollout-to-decline-in-us-birth-rates\/","title":{"rendered":"Study links iPhone rollout to decline in US birth rates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/personal-tech\/2026\/06\/09\/study-links-iphone-rollout-to-decline-in-us-birth-rates\/5253138\">Study links iPhone rollout to decline in US birth rates<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/personal-tech\/2026\/06\/09\/study-links-iphone-rollout-to-decline-in-us-birth-rates\/5253138\">https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/personal-tech\/2026\/06\/09\/study-links-iphone-rollout-to-decline-in-us-birth-rates\/5253138<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-06-09 16:49:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.theregister.com\">www.theregister.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"kicker \" style=\"\">personal tech<\/p>\n<p class=\"subtitle t20\" style=\"\">Economists find signs of a \u2018large and causal relationship between iPhones and fertility&#8217; in AT&#038;T exclusivity-era data<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019ve identified a potential new culprit: The iPhone.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s right: A National Bureau of Economic Research working paper examines AT&#038;T mobile broadband coverage from the iPhone\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u201319 in counties with access to the iPhone through AT&#038;T saw birth rates fall by as much as 8 percent during the study period, while those aged 20\u201324 experienced declines of up to 6.6 percent. Older age groups also showed &#8220;statistically significant but smaller declines,&#8221; according to the paper. Myers argues the findings point to more than a simple correlation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s pretty much undeniable that births fell faster in places with AT&#038;T coverage,\u201d Myers told <span class=\"italic m-italic \" data-lab-italic=\"italic\">The Register<\/span> in an email. \u201cAs a scientist, I\u2019m loath to ever say causality is \u2018proven\u2019 \u2026 but I would say that we\u2019ve identified a compelling natural experiment and that it strongly points to a large and causal relationship between iPhones and fertility.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/personal-tech\/2026\/06\/09\/study-links-iphone-rollout-to-decline-in-us-birth-rates\/5253138\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Study links iPhone rollout to decline in US birth rates https:\/\/www.theregister.com\/personal-tech\/2026\/06\/09\/study-links-iphone-rollout-to-decline-in-us-birth-rates\/5253138 Publish Date: 2026-06-09 16:49:00&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":268747,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/image.theregister.com\/229069.jpg?imageId=229069&x=0&y=0&cropw=100&croph=100&panox=0&panoy=0&panow=100&panoh=100&width=1200&height=683","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-268746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iphone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268746"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":268748,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268746\/revisions\/268748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}