Can smartphones help explain the drop in birth rates?

Published June 12, 2026 · Category: News

Overview

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone in 2007. A new working paper suggests the spread of smartphones helps explain the persistent decline in birth rates in the nearly two decades since.

Are smartphones causing people to have fewer children? A provocative new working paper explores the persistent drop in birth rates since the iPhone was introduced nearly two decades ago.

Details

(Image credit: David Paul Morris)

Source

Originally published at www.npr.org.

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