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From the Stork to Fertility Apps

Rampazzo Francesco, Oxford University
Alyce Raybould, University College London
Pietro Rampazzo, Technical University of Denmark
Ross Barker, Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital

The market for smartphone apps tracking fertility through menstrual cycles has grown in recent years. These apps brand themselves as empowering their users to reach their reproductive goals, claiming to help achieve a pregnancy more easily than through conventional medical channels. This paper offers the first comprehensive quantification of fertility tracking app users. Using data collected from Google Play Store and Apple App Store, we calculate the most downloaded apps, and the global distribution of use. We use Bayesian data fusion methodologies which allow multiple data sources to be combined accounting for uncertainty. We use a log-log model fitted on the Google Play Store data to predict the Apple App Store number of installations. Our findings show that 74% of downloads are for just three of 28 apps. The majority of the reviews are left by users in North America, Northern Europe, and Australia; but it is noteworthy that downloads are also widespread in the Global South. Ongoing work will analyse the reviews left by users on the two app stores to understand whether these apps are primarily being used to achieve or avoid pregnancy, as well as what users look for when choosing between fertility tracking apps.

Keywords: Family planning and contraception, Digital and computational demography, Fertility and childbirth

See extended abstract.

  Presented in Session P9.