Infertility Service Use among Fertility-Impaired Women in the United States: 1995-2010

Anjani Chandra, National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), CDC
Elizabeth H. Stephen, Georgetown University
Rosalind B. King, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), NIH

Although Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) represents a very small proportion of overall infertility service use in the U.S., it drives much of the public’s perception about access to and use of medical services to have a child. We examine trends and individual-level correlates for use of medical services to have a child, using data from the 1995, 2002, and 2006-10 National Surveys of Family Growth (NSFG), each a nationally representative, cross-sectional survey of women 15-44 years of age. The analysis sample is comprised of NSFG female respondents with either infertility or impaired fecundity at time of interview. Our outcome measures are ever having used any infertility services and highest level of services used. We extend prior analyses showing that infertility service use remains closely tied to socioeconomic factors, and the threshold effect of these factors has shifted further upward towards the receipt of more costly services such as ART.