Sixteen and Pregnant : Missing Links in the Causal Chain from Reality TV to Fertility . A replication study of Kearney

We replicate and extend the analysis of the positive association between social media (Google searches and tweets) and the MTV program 16 and Pregnant recently published by Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine (2015). We find that the relationship disappears or even turns negative when we include in the analysis periods when new episodes of 16 and Pregnant were not being broadcast. The results are also sensitive to the use of weights. Our results cast substantial doubt on social media as a link in the causal chain between reality television and fertility. *CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10016 and University of Cologne, IZA, and NBER, e-mail: dj@djaeger.org †Baruch College, CUNY, 55 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10010 and NBER, e-mail: theodore.joyce@baruch.cuny.edu ‡University of Illinois, 815 West Van Buren Street, Suite 525, Chicago, IL 60607 and NBER, e-mail: kaestner@uic.edu. Acknowledgements: We thank Phil Levine for providing data used in this analysis, and Nils Braakman and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. Received August 8, 2018; Revised December 31, 2018; Accepted January 2, 2019; Published January 29, 2019. ©Author(s) 2019. Licensed under the Creative Common License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).