The Demand for and Supply of Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the United States: Nationally Representative and Clinic Data, 1995-2010

Although Assisted Reproduction Technologies (ART) represent a very small proportion of overall infertility service use in the United States, they drive 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 two sources. The first data source is the 1995, 2002, and 2006-10 National Surveys of Family Growth (NSFG), each a U.S.-nationally representative, cross-sectional survey of women 15-44 years of age. The second source is fertility clinic data collected by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology; we analyze clinic data from 1999-2010. This mixed-data approach allows us to determine trends in the demand for infertility services at the national level and to explore diagnoses, medical treatment and outcomes at the clinic level. Preliminary findings from the two data sources indicate an increase in the utilization of ART over this time period, and a decrease in tubal factor and endometriosis as patient diagnoses.