Pocket-sized population threat
Investigation into lower birth rates cites UC research
The Financial Times recently took a deep dive into why populations around the world continue to be on the decline. As part of the investigation, the publication cited new University of Cincinnati research that looks at the fall of fertility in the digital era.
The new research, co-authored by UC doctoral candidate Nathan Hudson and Hernan Moscoso Boedo, PhD, associate professor of economics at the Carl H. Lindner College of Business, is an early-stage study on the decrease in young pregnancies as smartphone access increases.
The work was recently published on SSRN, a platform that shares early-stage social science research in an open-access repository.
The Financial Times highlights the study because it looks beyond economic reasons for birth rate decline and addresses the rapid shift in social scenes as smartphones and the internet become more accessible.
The study looks at birth rates in relation to the rollout of 4G networks in the US and UK. Hudson and Moscoso Boedo’s findings show that the number of births fell first and fastest in the areas that received high-speed mobile connectivity earliest.
According to the Financial Times, this shows that smartphones have transformed how young people spend time with one another, sharply reducing in-person socialising and leading to the collapse in their fertility.
"We find that fertility among teens fell the fastest all around the world," said Moscoso Boedo. "In follow-up research we are investigating this shift from deeper relationships to broad and shallow ones facilitated by the digital revolution."
Read the full Financial Times report (subscription required).
Research cited in the New York Times
The study was also mentioned in a New York Times article looking at research into why birthrates are down.
The article reports that dropping birthrates are now a "near-global phenomenon." Hudson and Moscoso Boedo’s research is cited as an example of how current research is pivoting away from just economic resasons from decline to find factors influencing fertility rates worldwide.
While the study does not prove smartphones are necessarily the culprit, Hudson and Moscoso Boedo write that the driving factor is "something that arrived in roughly the same form in all of these places at roughly the same time."
Read the full New York Times article (subscription required).
Featured image at top of a young woman alone on her cellphone. Photo/Constantinis/iStockPhoto
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