Demography and fertility: In vitro veritas
(sz) If a country wants to keep its population up, it should promote IVF
Infertility is normally seen as a private matter. If a couple are infertile and wish they were not, that is sad. But there is understandable resistance in many countries to the idea that treatments intended to deal with this sadness—known collectively as assisted reproductive technologies, or ARTs—should be paid for out of public funds. Such funds are scarce, and infertility is not a life-threatening condition.
However, two papers presented to the “State of the ART” conference held earlier this month in Lyon argue that in Europe, at least, there may be a public interest in promoting ARTs after all. The low fertility rate in many of that continent’s more developed countries means their populations are ageing and shrinking. If governments want to change this, ARTs—most significantly in-vitro fertilisation (IVF)—could offer at least part of a way to do so.
As the conference heard, IVF does seem to be keeping up the numbers in at least one country. Tina Jensen of the University of Southern Denmark has just finished a study of more than 700,000 Danish women. She found that young women in Denmark have a significantly lower natural conception rate than in past decades. That is partly, but not entirely, because they are having their children later in life. The rest of the cause is unknown, though reduced sperm quality in men may be a factor. Whatever the cause, she also found that the effect has been almost completely compensated for by an increasing use of ARTs. Denmark’s native population is more or less stable, but some 3.9% of babies born there in 2003 (the most recent year for which figures are available) were the result of IVF. The comparable figure for another northern European country, Britain, was 1.5%. more…
From: »The Economist« (from the print edition)