Trump Gets Good News, Bad News About IVF Plans to Increase US Birth Rate

President Donald Trump’s efforts to make in vitro fertilization (IVF) more affordable may have the potential to generate tens of thousands of additional births in the United States, according to a major new international study. But the research also suggests that even a dramatic increase in IVF births would be unlikely to reverse the country’s broader fertility decline on its own.

Researchers found that halving out-of-pocket IVF costs could more than double births achieved through assisted reproductive technology, potentially resulting in roughly 140,000 to 160,000 additional births a year in the United States. While that would represent one of the largest measurable gains from a pronatalist policy, it would still offset only a fraction of the country’s long-running fertility decline, meaning reducing IVF costs alone likely isn’t enough to reverse America’s declining birth rate.

Trump has made reversing America’s declining birth rate a priority of his second term, arguing that policymakers should make it easier and more affordable for Americans who want children to have them. In February 2025, he signed an executive order directing his administration to develop recommendations to expand access to IVF and aggressively reduce the out-of-pocket costs associated with fertility treatment. The order cited the high price of IVF-often between $12,000 and $25,000 per cycle-as a major barrier for would-be parents.

The administration has since pursued additional efforts aimed at lowering fertility treatment costs, including initiatives targeting the price of fertility medications and exploring new coverage options for patients. Trump has frequently linked those efforts to broader concerns about America’s falling fertility rate, which has remained below replacement level for years. Supporters argue that making IVF more affordable could help thousands of families who want children but are unable to conceive naturally.

"We'll dramatically slash the cost of IVF and the treatment and many of the most common fertility drugs for countless millions of Americans," Trump said in October. "Prices are going way down, way, way down."

Lowering IVF Cost Impact on Birth Rate, According to Study

An international study presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology’s annual meeting found that halving out-of-pocket fertility treatment costs was associated with a 2.67-fold increase in births achieved through assisted reproductive technology (ART). Alan Murray, CEO and co-founder of fertility technology company Conceivable Life Sciences, which conducted the survey, told Newsweek that if similar gains occurred in the United States, lower IVF costs could enable roughly 140,000 to 160,000 additional births annually.

Researchers analyzed fertility treatment affordability across 25 countries and regions representing more than 95 percent of global ART activity. They developed a “cost-to-baby” metric that measured the cost required to achieve a live birth through assisted reproductive technology relative to median household income.

The findings showed striking differences between countries.

Places where fertility treatment costs represented a relatively small share of household income-including Israel, Japan, Spain and South Korea-consistently recorded some of the highest rates of ART births. In countries where fertility treatment costs approached or exceeded annual household income, IVF births accounted for only a tiny share of total births.

The study found that halving patients’ out-of-pocket costs was associated with a 2.67-fold increase in ART-conceived births.

Murray told Newsweek that affordability appears to be the primary barrier preventing many Americans from accessing treatment.

“Countries where the net patient-paid cost of an IVF birth is below about half of median household income-Israel, Japan, Spain, Taiwan-see IVF account for roughly 9-12% of all births. The US, where net costs typically run above 75% of household income, sits at about 2.5 percent,” Murray said. “What that tells me is that cost relief doesn’t just nudge the numbers, it unlocks people.”

A Pew Research study from 2023 found 42 percent of people have used fertility treatments or know someone who has, which is up nearly 10 points from five years prior. Upper-income adults were nearly twice as likely to have used fertility treatments or know someone who has. It’s a result that isn’t particularly surprising given how expensive fertility treatments can be.

More than 85,000 babies were born through IVF in the United States in 2021, according to federal figures cited by the White House when Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to reduce barriers to fertility treatment. Applying the study’s 2.67-fold increase to that figure suggests IVF births could rise to approximately 227,000 annually if affordability improved to the degree modeled by researchers-a gain of roughly 142,000 births per year.

“Our data implies that roughly halving that cost burden could mean something like 160,000 additional American families having a child who otherwise couldn’t,” Murray said. “That’s not a rounding error. That’s 160,000 people getting to hold a baby they were told they couldn’t have.”

Still, Murray cautioned against overstating what IVF alone can accomplish.

“I’d be careful about the framing of ‘does this reverse the national birth rate,'” he said. “No single lever does that, and anyone who tells you IVF alone closes the whole gap is overselling it.”

How Much Does IVF Cost?

Cost has long been one of the biggest financial barriers facing prospective parents who require fertility treatment. A Kaiser Family Foundation study found that 12 percent of women who needed access to fertility care but didn’t get it cited cost as the reason why they didn’t get the care.

While some estimates put a single cycle between $12,000 and $25,000, other estimates put the cost up to $70,000 and some people require multiple cycles to have a successful pregnancy.

Insurance coverage varies significantly across the country and is usually dependent on state laws or an employer’s plan. Over a dozen states require fertility coverage, but that doesn’t usually include self-insured plans, which are common for employer health plans.

Trump’s February 2025 executive order directed officials to develop recommendations to lower IVF costs and expand access. The administration has also announced initiatives targeting fertility drug prices and seeking to reduce treatment expenses for patients.

"No president has done more to help Americans struggling to form families than President Trump, who has slashed key fertility drug prices by up to 90 percent and who signed an executive order creating a new benefit option for employers to expand fertility healthcare coverage for their employees. That's all on top of additional actions by the FDA to cut red tape and soon approve more lower-cost alternatives to fertility treatments that are already on the market,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told Newsweek.

Researchers behind the new study argue that international comparisons show affordability is one of the strongest predictors of IVF utilization. However, Murray noted that if access to IVF expands because of lower costs, there could be other constraints to consider.

“Our research says affordability is the binding constraint globally. The other real constraint is clinical capacity: even a successful cost intervention doesn’t help if there aren’t enough embryologists to run the additional cycles,” Murray said.

What Is the US Birth Rate?

The United States fertility rate has fallen well below the replacement level, the threshold needed for a population to replace itself from one generation to the next without immigration.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that the country’s total fertility rate has declined substantially from levels seen just a few decades ago. Demographers generally define replacement-level fertility as approximately 2.1 births per woman. In 2024, that rate was 1.6, according to the CDC.

The decline has become an increasing focus of policymakers, economists and demographic researchers concerned about long-term implications for economic growth, workforce participation and an aging population. With fewer people being born, there are fewer workers to support retirees because there are less people paying into Social Security and Medicare at a time when Social Security solvency is already heading for a cliff.

For proponents of fertility treatment expansion, IVF may represent one of the few pronatalist policies with a direct and measurable connection to births. The new research suggests affordability can strongly influence utilization rates. But researchers also acknowledge that infertile couples make up only one portion of the broader population contributing to national fertility trends.

The challenge conceptually is that we can’t really assume additional IVF births are offsetting the same factors that led to the long-term decline in U.S. births. The decline reflects many demographic, economic, and social changes over several decades, whereas lower IVF costs would primarily affect a much smaller group of people who want children but are experiencing infertility. So I would be cautious about saying the policy could “make up” 20% of the birth decline, because those aren’t really comparable quantities.

Alison Gemmill, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the UCLA School of Public Health, told Newsweek that the conceptual challenge with studying the impact of IVF on the birth rate is that you can’t assume more IVF births are “offsetting the same factors that led to the long-term decline in U.S. births.” She attributed the decline to many different demographic, economic and social changes over decades, while IVF costs impact a smaller group of people who are experiencing infertility.



She disagreed that lower IVF costs could “make up” a significant portion of the declining birth rate because they aren’t “comparable quantities,” although she added that the study shows it’s possible lower IVF costs could produce a “modest” increase in total births in the United States.

A growing share of Americans under 50 say they are unlikely to have kids, rising from 37 percent in 2018 to 47 percent in 2023, according to Pew Research. The majority of adults under 50 without children said they don’t have kids because they just didn’t want them, followed by adults who want to focus on other things at 44 percent. While not a top reason for not having kids, 36 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 49 said they didn’t have kids because they couldn’t afford to raise a child.

US Birth Rate Decline Over Time

America’s fertility decline predates Trump and has persisted across multiple administrations. Annual births reached approximately 4.3 million in 2007 before declining sharply following the Great Recession. While births have fluctuated modestly in recent years, the country’s fertility rate remains far below the level seen during the mid-2000s.

The scale of that decline helps explain why the new IVF findings represent both good news and bad news for the White House.

Using recent birth totals, an additional 142,000 to 160,000 IVF births annually would represent a substantial increase. It would likely be large enough to appear in national demographic statistics and could offset roughly one-fifth of the decline in annual births that has occurred since the late 2000s peak.

Yet that still leaves hundreds of thousands of fewer births than the country recorded before fertility rates began their prolonged decline.

The study therefore points to a nuanced conclusion. Lowering IVF costs could help tens of thousands of Americans have children they otherwise might never have. For individual families facing infertility, that impact could be life-changing.

But reversing America’s broader fertility slowdown would likely require a wider set of solutions beyond fertility treatment alone, including factors many researchers cite when discussing family formation decisions, such as housing costs, child care expenses, workplace flexibility and broader economic conditions.

For Trump, the study offers evidence that one of his signature fertility initiatives could work. The challenge is that even a successful IVF affordability push appears likely to address only part of a much larger demographic problem.

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Gray R. Thomas

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This story was originally published July 13, 2026 at 7:39 PM.