Infertility Rate among U.S Women Continuously Declining

The report of National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) states that regardless of the latest improvements giving solution to infertility, infertility rates are continuously declining among U.S. women of child-bearing age.

The results showed a downward slope for a national trend for impaired fecundity or female infertility from 11.2 percent of married women aged 15 to 44 years in 1965 to six percent in 2006 to 2010.

In the study, Anjani Chandra, PhD, from the National Center for Health Statistics, Hyattsville, Maryland and her colleagues used records from the NSFG between June 2006 to June 2010, to analyze the rates of impaired fecundity and infertility in U.S adults. They then compared those data with the center's previous data.

The survey specifies that the percentage of impaired fecundity or the ability to carry a pregnancy to live birth or physical incapacity in becoming pregnant rose from 10.8 percent in 1982 to 15.1 percent in 2002 then dropped to 12.1 in 2006 to 2010.

On the other hand, percentage of married women between 15 to 44 years who were unable to become pregnant for at least a year despite having unprotected sex with the same partner diminished from 8.5 percent in 1982 to six percent in 2010.

Apparently, age appears to be a factor in infertility for women. The researchers found that seven percent of women between 15 to 24 years of age and 13 percent of women between 24 to 44 years old had impaired fecundity. While 14 percent of the women between 25 to 44 years old and 30 percent of women between 40 to 44 years were infertile or subfertile.

A greater percentage of Asian women having 74.6 percent were more fertile compared with other ethnicities having 49.1 percent to 52.6 percent.

Among men between 15 to 44 years of age, fertility rates remain stable between 2002 (73.8 percent) and 2006 to 2010 (76.7 percent). However, infertility, mainly surgical sterilization, was more common among men aged 40 to 44 years than among younger men.

This study is published online in National Health Statistics Reports.

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