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Davie Elderqueer, PhD's avatar

I deeply appreciate your standards for looking across societies, globally, when we propose causation stories for what’s going on. Thank you!

Meanwhile, having been born at a time of collective alarm at the carrying capacity of our planet, I find it utterly crazymaking to hear, simultaneously, that 1) developed countries are in critical need of more people to support capitalism’s baseline requirement of perpetual growth , 2) there are far too many people trying to get into, and find work inside, developed countries, and 3) we need to raise fertility on a planet that can’t handle more of us.

I’d love to hear a mind like yours taking this on.

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Jeff Rigsby's avatar

I don't see how huge drops over the course of a decade can be anything but smartphones. Gender attitudes, levels of environmental toxins, etc. couldn't change fast enough (and simultaneously across countries, no less) to produce that outcome.

Wouldn't it be useful to have more disaggregated data, like a time series for "annual birth rates in among 24-year-old women" in each Nigerian state? That would allow you to identify natural experiments (different timing of introduction to smartphones, based on where the networks rolled out and when) which could test the hypothesis more rigorously.

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