Don't Blame Plunging Birthrates on Phones

yeah, the study this is criticizing [0] is extremely flawed - it tries to treat "parts of the country that got access to the AT&T-exclusive original iPhone" as a natural experiment, but that falls apart because "what parts of the country have the best AT&T coverage" is a terrible natural experiment, it ignores that AT&T service areas are not random, but subject to the same confounding variables that influence birth rates.

but at the same time, I don't trust this author to come up with a better explanation for anything to do with fertility or birthrates.

her byline at the top of the article:

> a senior fellow at the Georgetown University Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life

and then buried at the bottom of the article:

> a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48444543