Infertility Statistics: You are Not Alone

Couples who are going through infertility problems can feel isolated, and watching friends and family having babies creates additional stress and frustration. (Believe me, I know!)  It is easy to forget how many couples in the US alone experience infertility.  Once you realize the staggering nature of infertility statistics, you may feel less alone and more able to reach out to other couples and learn about their own experiences and frustrations in trying to get pregnant.

Infertility statistics for women of childbearing age (between 15 and 44) in the US suggest that approximately 7.3 million of those women have some impairment to their ability to have children. Many of these women don’t even know that they have a problem until they try to start a family.   Many couples upon learning that they face fertility challenges opt to undergo fertility treatments — in fact, a significant percent of the babies in your circle of friends and family may well have been conceived with the help of some form of infertility treatment in order to conceive.

Women Receiving Infertility Services

Nearly 12% of women between 15 and 44 years of age have impaired fecundity, which means that not only might they have problems with getting pregnant, they may also have trouble carrying a baby to term. Our ability to identify clinical pregnancies earlier and earlier with blood tests and sophisticated over-the-counter tests means that many women who may not have realized in generations past that they were failing to carry to term are now acutely aware of early miscarriages. As a result of this high rate of impaired fecundity, in 2002 11.9% of women between 15 and 44 years of age have received some sort of infertility services.  (That’s about 7.3 million women.)   The form of infertility services these women received is varied.  6.1% of women of childbearing age received professional advice regarding their fertility, and 5.5% of women of childbearing age have received some sort of medical help to prevent a miscarriage.  Close to 5% of women of childbearing age have undergone a fertility test.   When you consider that not every woman in this age group is trying to conceive, the actual percentage of women who are trying to start a family and undergo a fertility test is even higher.  Nearly 4% of women have received ovulation drugs, and 1.1% of women have received artificial insemination.

It is commonly known that as women age their ability to become pregnant decreases with the loss of their eggs. As a result, of course the percentage of women receiving some form of fertility services increases in higher age brackets.    Any woman age 35 or older is considered to be of “advanced maternal age.”  The percent of childless women between the ages of 35 and 39 who have received infertility services is 15.2%, whereas for women between the ages of 15 and 29 the rate is only 2.9%.    Interestingly, the highest rate of childless women who have received any infertility service occurs in the bracket of women between 30 and 34 years of age, at 17.3%. Very likely this high statistic arises from both the added fertility problems that come with age and the fact that many women are now choosing to start their families in their early 30s.

Women Diagnosed as Infertile By Age Bracket

The following table illustrates the increase in infertility, as diagnosed by physicians, as a woman’s age increases.

IVF Success Statistics

Of course, a diagnosis of infertility does not mean that bearing a child is impossible.   IVF, a very effective fertility treatment, has a rate of producing live births about 38% of the time for women of  31 years. The rate of live births per each IVF treatment decreases by age, such that by 39, the percentage of live births is around 22%. and after age 43 the percentage of live births drops to less than 10%. Even for women in their 40′s, the dream of a family is not out of reach. Although the IVF success rate is less than 10% at age 40 using the mother’s own eggs, women who opt to use an egg donor have a success rate of about 45%.

Hopefully these statistics have created some optimism regarding your ability to get pregnant, and help you to feel less alone.   Because of many women’s poor understanding of their own fertility, pregnancy results can be even higher if a woman takes charge to get herself educated about her options.

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