A scan of the paper seems to show that they don't consider the confounding influence of urban density. Humans don't seem to have innate "quorum sensing" the way bacteria do, but expensive housing is likely to have something to do with it
and between leftists dogpiling in big cities where their votes don't count and those cities making it close to impossible to build housing that has to be a factor, together with individualism, anti-natalism, etc.
If it were just a matter of population density, not just metro area population, then low-density high-population metro areas, like those on the west coast, would still have high fertility rates, but they are lower than the high-density high-population metro areas on the east coast.
There seems to be a much stronger correlation to culture or general location than population density.
Everyone likes to gatekeep what urban is, to the point that some only consider New York City or even just Long Island to be an urban area. The areas in the linked graph are all recognized as urban areas by the US Census Bureau, and whether you're in Odessa Texas, Provo Utah, Vancouver Washington, or Pasadena California, you're in a similar population density with similar services, except maybe that going to Salt Lake or Savannah airports only takes 45 minutes, instead of the one to two hours it takes to get to LAX from Pasadena.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 26.2 ms ] threadhttps://www.pacificresearch.org/housing-costs-drove-the-majo...
and between leftists dogpiling in big cities where their votes don't count and those cities making it close to impossible to build housing that has to be a factor, together with individualism, anti-natalism, etc.
If it were just a matter of population density, not just metro area population, then low-density high-population metro areas, like those on the west coast, would still have high fertility rates, but they are lower than the high-density high-population metro areas on the east coast.
There seems to be a much stronger correlation to culture or general location than population density.
You might want to google those cities, since every single one that I've checked is a small population city surrounded by rural area.
Your argument about cultural influence might be more persuasive if you compared larger cities.