Not necessarily. A 2016 U.S. dataset found that iPhone ownership helped classify people in a high-income group, but the reported 69.1% figure is not the chance that any iPhone owner is rich. The result is a historical association—not a personal wealth test or evidence that owning an Apple device raises income.
What did the iPhone and iPad study find?
A 2018 TechTimes report summarized results based on 2016 data: iPhone ownership had a 69.1% rate of correctly identifying someone as belonging to the study’s high-income group; the corresponding reported figure for iPad ownership was 66.9%. Those percentages are attributed to the report, which described the high-income category relative to household type. They should not be read as a universal definition of being rich. TechTimes’ 2018 report
The authors, Marianne Bertrand and Emir Kamenica, were quoted as writing: “Across all years in our data, no individual brand is as predictive of being high-income as owning an Apple iPhone in 2016.” The phrase “in our data” matters: this describes the study’s dataset and its 2016 result, not a claim about phones or owners today. TechTimes’ report quoting the authors
Why 69.1% does not mean an iPhone owner has a 69.1% chance of being rich
The statistic describes classification accuracy: how often an indicator correctly identified membership in the study’s high-income group under the study’s definitions. It is not the probability that a particular person who owns an iPhone is rich. Those are different questions. To estimate an owner’s probability of belonging to a group, one would need the relevant group’s prevalence and the study’s full classification method, not accuracy alone.
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Nor does the result show that buying an iPhone or iPad increases income. The study examines associations between behaviors and group membership; it does not establish that device ownership causes higher earnings or wealth. A phone may correlate with other differences between households, but the reported figures do not identify why the association appeared.
What was the paper actually about?
Bertrand and Kamenica’s “Coming Apart? Cultural Distances in the United States over Time” was issued as NBER Working Paper 24771 in June 2018 and later published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, volume 15, issue 4, in October 2023, pages 100–141. It studies how well group membership can be inferred from signals such as media consumption, consumer behavior, time use, social attitudes and, in the journal abstract, newborn names. The groups include categories based on income, education, gender, race and political ideology. NBER working paper record American Economic Journal article record
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The iPhone finding is one consumer-behavior result within that broader analysis. The paper’s central subject is cultural distance between groups over time, not whether Apple products make people wealthy.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Can you tell if someone is rich from their phone?
No—not reliably from that fact alone. The reported result says that iPhone ownership was a useful group-classification signal in one historical U.S. dataset. It does not determine an individual’s income, savings, debt, net worth or financial security. A device choice cannot substitute for those measures, and the study does not establish that the same signal works for today’s owners or in other populations.
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The sensible takeaway is narrower: in the study’s 2016 data, iPhone ownership was associated with the high-income category strongly enough to be a notable predictor. That finding is informative about patterns in that dataset, not a verdict on any person holding an iPhone or iPad.
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