The number of Americans who have had fertility treatments or say they know someone who has increased nearly 30% over the past five years, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center.
In 2018, 33% of American adults said they had fertility treatments or personally knew someone who had them. That jumped to 42% in 2023.
Researchers at Pew said the increase was driven in part by white adults. Nearly half of white adults surveyed, 48%, said they knew of or used fertility treatments, an increase of 11 percentage points from 37% in 2018.
Even though the number of people who know of someone getting a fertility treatment has increased significantly, the number of women reporting that they received actual treatments remained relatively stable, around 10% since the early 2000s.
Pew also found that a majority of Americans, no matter age or political leaning, think health insurance should cover fertility treatments. Sixty-one percent of the entire group think fertility treatments, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars, should be covered. Among Republicans, 54% say the services should be covered, compared to 69% of Democrats.
What’s behind the rise of fertility treatment knowledge? The survey didn’t get at that question, but one possibility (among many) is the rise of TikTok. Data from the Wall Street Journal found that people spend 18 million hours per day watching Reels on Instagram, but an incredible 198 million hours per day on TikTok. The rise of the short-form videos that TikTok is famous for is perhaps one way people have learned about fertility journeys in more depth.
