But there doesn't have to be a new cause just because it reaches some threshold that might cause negative consequences. I think people assume something new must be happening because they (a) think 2 births per family is natural and lower rates are disordered, or (b) don't know history.
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," ...
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," ...
Here is a hypothesis: The basic condition of modernity is falling birth rates, for mostly positive reasons that are pretty well understood. When they get low enough some people think the consequences will be bad and figure there must be some new, bad reason birth rates are falling.
...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...