Mobile technologies, fertility preferences, and the calculus of conscious choice

This study explores the relationship between mobile technologies (MTs) and fertility preferences across 42 low- and middle-income countries. Theoretically, we shift the focus from TV/radio to mobile phones, Internet, and smartphones, building on a blend of diffusion and world society perspectives. Methodologically, we explore non-numeric and numeric fertility-preference outcomes using Demographic and Health Surveys. Associations with non-numeric ideals reveal that women owning MTs are less likely to report uncertainty, fatalism, or ambiguity in their preferences, a pattern consistent with MTs helping to move fertility into the calculus of conscious choice. Conversely, associations with numeric ideals are more consistent with MTs being linked to broader schemas of choice and agency than with uniform reductions in desired family size per se. Importantly, MTs are associated with higher desires to have children for women with no children or one child but lower desires for women with two or more children, providing evidence of selective convergence around the two-child norm, driven by high-fertility contexts.