Smartphones arrived just before the US fertility rate plunged. One study says it’s a direct cause | CNN

The US fertility rate has been trending down for decades, leaving researchers and policymakers searching for causes that may help pinpoint solutions. There have been all kinds of theories, including soaring costs of childcare, the rise of birth control and even the role of car seat regulations. A new paper offers a provocative culprit in a succinct package: the smartphone. But some other researchers are skeptical that this single factor could play such an outsized role in a much longer-term trend. 2007 marked a particularly significant “inflection point” in the US fertility rate, said Caitlin Myers, an economist with Middlebury College and the National Bureau of Economic Research, who is the lead author on the new paper. The Great Recession started at the end of the year, just a few months after Apple started rolling out the iPhone in the US – the first modern smartphone. “We initially all just assumed it was the global recession. Births have long been known to be pro-cyclical, and so the conventional wisdom was they’ll come back up,” she said. “Then we had a baby-less recovery.” In the years since, Myers said, she would often raise the topic of “iGen” — a nam