Sociologist and demographer, U. of Maryland; SocArXiv director.
Latest book: Citizen Scholar: Public Engagement for Social Scientists https://cup.columbia.edu/book/citizen-scholar/9780231555418
Website: philipncohen.com
Blog: familyinequality.com
Philip N Cohen
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In conclusion, of course phones could be part of the ongoing social transformation that has driven down birth rates -- for the last 200 years -- but the idea that they are a dominant cause of a sudden change is just obviously bullshit, which wastes time and money while making people dumber.
/rant
...or, "Teen births are falling because young women are influenced by changing mass media messages." That's what a sociologist might investigate. These economists jump right to a ridiculously narrow proxy for a larger process and devote all their powers to proving it has some significant effect,...
This dumb phones-cause-fertility-decline theory is a kind of economics research I dislike. It's just like Melissa Kearney's old thing about 16 and Pregnant causing a decline in teen births. A reasonable hypothesis would be, "Birth rates are falling because fewer people are dating and marrying," ...
...which is invariably improbably huge. In the process they skip over the interesting larger social processes - about which they display little curiosity (cuz they don't read theory or history) - and focus on pumping up their one-little-trick toy model. Which is obviously very good clickbait...
Watch what happens when you remove this phrase: nothing
