I don’t want to be flippantly dismissive but surely there was a certain other event in 2008 that caused many families to reconsider the financial wisdom of starting a family.
Even if you control for age and wealth, the people who used iPhones in 2008, i.e. tech hipsters, are obviously different in tangible ways from the people who didn't use iPhones in 2008. It's not possible to prove causality from that.
Are the tech hipsters disproportionately in the areas already covered by AT&T? It seems plausible, if Apple and AT&T were targeting similar demographics that Apple would choose AT&T as its first partner. But it's on the edge of weird correlations where the burden of proof starts to fall on the person disputing that the study is unbiased, rather than on the researchers to rule out every possible correlation.
Alternatively, maybe you are arguing that even if iPhones caused a decline in birth rate among tech hipsters, that doesn't transfer to the population at large. This is both less believable and less valuable as a criticism of the study: even if the result only holds in one demographic group it's still an interesting finding.
Aren't iPhones the first sexy enough phone for more than tech hipsters? I still remember BlackBerry (aka CrackBerries), which was what business types used. And then iPhone came along, and pinch-to-zoom was such a sexier UX.
Sheesh, when the addictive scrolling was scrolling through your emails and BB Messenger messages...
Or, the kind of people who bought iPhones in 2008 were a different subset of the population than those who didn’t and as such they have different opinions and preferences when it comes to family and kids?
With that said, I can also see that infinite entertainment and infinite information makes you deprioritize having children.
But it’s far from proof, this study. It’s more like “I found some numbers that support my already existing opinion, so let’s run with that”.
Maybe some people realized that they could wait a few years and still have kids later, and others didn't think about having kids purely though the lens of evolutionary biology.
nitpick about what you said: you don't wanna postpone that plan too much. At 40 you won't have the energy to keep up with the needs of the kid. You will hate your life and you'll make a ton of mistakes. I had them young, and my career and financial situation weren't affected at all.
Before political correctness hit this area, doctors' observations led to classifying any first pregnancy past 25yo as geriatric. Healthcare progresses in some areas, some (like DS) are rigid to socially defined trends.
Okay? My parents had me at 35 in the 90s, and I'm sure you've met plenty of people who had similarly aged parents. It's not like there's one perfect age for everyone to have kids, and my point is that if some people realize at 25 that waiting five years puts them in a better position to raise kids, what's the problem with that?
Biologically there is an age range for all. Various complication risks raise pretty much continuously from about 20, for both the mother and the child. Say Down Syndrome is 5x more likely at 35 than at 20.
Last century geriatric pregnancy was one term used for over 35s. It is no longer used, and 25 seems like it is social media bullshit. Apparently the term was created ~1960 for international usage because medical complications after that age were far more risky in the 50s.
Since people using other carriers also experienced 2008, it's not that.