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Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]

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Re: Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]

#51

Post by laurentiurad »

saghm wrote: post #17
jojobas wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No financial chicanery is good enough a reason to end your line.

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.

Re: Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]

#52

Post by serial_dev »

jraby3 wrote: post #12
jimbob45 wrote: post #10

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.

They compared AT&T users with an iPhone (the only place you could get an iPhone) to users with other carriers. Since people using other carriers also experienced 2008, it's not that.

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”.

Re: Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]

#53

Post by toast0 »

lstodd wrote: post #46
tengbretson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it costs $1200000 to raise baby What exactly are you planning to do with all that money anyway? Consume things?

The right question is "to what age". Get all McKinsey and calculate a TCO of a baby from conception to end-of-uni. $1.2M is low-end even for eastern EU, it's more like twice that. 0-to-23. $100K/year. This what a baby costs.

Yeah, but you didn't consider the resale value.

Or the potential for end of life care.

And apparently grandkids are neat, but it's hard to have those without having kids. Not sure how to value that one.

Re: Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]

#54

Post by rickdeckard »

lstodd wrote: post #41
initramfs wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to say. In 2007-2011, during the time of that study, I was using Nokia Symbian phones.

Hahaha yes. Those times there still were original Sony to be had and not that Sony-Ericsson crap.

I wouldn't have expected the era that brought Walkman phones, Cybershot phones, the T610/T650, the P910 and many others (Xperia!) to be called "crap", compared to....dunno, the Sony CMD-Z5...?

(me walking down memory-lane...)

Re: Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]

#55

Post by mrweasel »

vachina wrote: post #23

Porn became easier to access. Men became less horny.

That might only be part of the issue. There has been some "experiments" where people are asked if they'd prefer to give up their phone for some period of time, or go without sex in that same period. Women were more likely to prefer their phones over sex and other studies show that women generally spend more time on their phones than men does.

Re: Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]

#56

Post by [deleted] »

benj111 wrote: post #47
jraby3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They compared AT&T users with an iPhone (the only place you could get an iPhone) to users with other carriers. Since people using other carriers also experienced 2008, it's not that.

Ah but maybe having an iPhone causes you to be more exposed to financial crashes. Or maybe the type of person that buys iPhones also spends too much on other items causing them to be over leveraged when a financial crash does occur.

[deleted]

Re: Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]

#57

Post by jojobas »

robocat wrote: post #40
jojobas wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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. Now ~20% of all pregnancies in the US are 35+.

Soviet doctors definitely used the term "старая первородящая" (old firstborn), google at your peril.

Re: Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]

#58

Post by frollogaston »

vachina wrote: post #23

Porn became easier to access. Men became less horny.

The men part doesn't really matter because birth rates are determined more by women's behaviors than anything else. And the paper does focus on women.

  Overall, the diffusion of the iPhone explains 33–52% of the decline in
  the general fertility rate among women aged 15–44.

Re: Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]

#59

Post by dmurray »

zarzavat wrote: post #21
jraby3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They compared AT&T users with an iPhone (the only place you could get an iPhone) to users with other carriers. Since people using other carriers also experienced 2008, it's not that.

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.

Re: Is the iPhone birth control? Causal evidence from AT&T's 2007-2011 monopoly [pdf]

#60

Post by [deleted] »

zarzavat wrote: post #21
jraby3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They compared AT&T users with an iPhone (the only place you could get an iPhone) to users with other carriers. Since people using other carriers also experienced 2008, it's not that.

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.

[deleted]
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