The demography of infertility in the United States

"Some popular descriptions of infertility have suggested that there are nine or ten million infertile couples, that one in six couples is infertile, that infertility is increasing rapidly, or that there is an 'epidemic' of infertility in the USA.... The purpose of this chapter is to determine whether these perceptions are accurate and if not, to suggest why there is a perception that infertility is epidemic.... We report two measures of infertility here. The first is called 'impaired fecundity' and is derived from a series of direct survey questions...on the ability to have children. The second is 'infertility status' among married couples." Data are from the National Survey of Family Growth for 1976, 1982, and 1988. Data for 1965 are from the National Fertility Study.