Benefits of Fertility Treatment Outweigh Costs: Study
Posted on: Monday, 19 June 2006, 19:25 CDT
PRAGUE -- The benefits of providing free fertility treatments to couples in Britain could far outweigh the costs to the government, according to new research reported on Tuesday.
Professor William Ledger, a fertility expert at the University of Sheffield in England, looked at the average cost of producing a baby through in-vitro fertilization and the benefit to the government over the person's lifetime.
He and a group of mathematicians and economists used a modeling exercise and calculated that for the average 13,000 pounds ($23,960) it costs to produce a child through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) the government would recoup 143,000 pounds in taxes alone.
"Helping people with infertility have children is not just a benefit to themselves and their families but also to society," he told a news conference.
"Overall there is a huge net positive benefit to society over that child's lifetime," he added.
The availability of government-funded fertility treatment varies across the country. Ledger said it was currently less than one treatment per eligible infertile couple.
But if it is increased to three treatments per couple, over the next two to three years the number of babies born through IVF could increase by 10,000.
"The average person over a lifetime will contribute 143,000 pounds to the state in benefits if they are an IVF child born to a mother of age 35," he explained.
In 2006 in Britain a live birth happens in about one treatment cycle in four.
In separate research presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), the independent research organization RAND Europe suggested that if European governments provided more fertility treatments for infertile couples it could offset the population aging crisis in Europe where the number of people over 65 years old is expected to double by 2050.
Almost 6,000 researchers, scientists and fertility experts are attending the four-day meeting.
Source: REUTERS
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