Today’s Economics of Fertility Treatment

Atlanta, GA – Since the beginning of the current economic downturn, everyone has been wondering how new financial considerations and constraints are affecting the decisions people make about a variety of reproductive medicine procedures. While there have been no national data collections, researchers have been evaluating their own clinics’ data and local data to arrive at some answers.

Many have speculated that more women would turn to compensated egg donation to try to supplement falling incomes and net worth in the downturn. To either confirm or disprove the reality of this phenomenon, researchers at Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine undertook a comparison of egg donor applicant characteristics from the 2002-2004 time period and 2008. Fifty-four interview records from 2002-2004 and 46 records from 2008 from a single private oocyte donation program were reviewed and compared. During both periods, the same person conducted the interviews and the same questionnaire was used. No significant difference was found in the applicants’ demographic characteristics. The age of prospective donors, their history of previous donation cycles, their education level, marital status, distribution of religions and religiosity remained consistent from the earlier period to the later. The largest difference to emerge was in the donors’ plans for use of their compensation. In 2002-2004, 28% planned to use the money to pay for schooling. This increased to 57% for 2008. Differences in other planned uses for the money were smaller: from 2002-2004 to 2008, the number of women planning to use their compensation to pay debt decreased from 32% to 21% and the number planning to save the money decreased from 20% to 11%.

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