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Infertility Insurance Mandates And Multiple Births

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  • Kasey S. Buckles

Abstract

In 2002, 15.4% of women of childbearing age in the USA reported struggles with infertility. Over the past 3 decades, drugs and assisted reproductive technologies have been developed to treat infertility, but treatment is costly. Since 1985, several states have adopted insurance mandates that require providers to cover or offer infertility treatments. In this paper, I examine the impact of strong mandate‐to‐cover laws on multiple births, which are associated with infertility treatment use. I also investigate whether the laws had heterogeneous treatment effects. Using birth certificate data from 1980–2002, I show that the laws had a small and statistically insignificant impact on multiple birth rates. However, I find that there were over 5300 mandate‐induced triplet and higher‐order births over the period, for which the delivery costs alone are estimated to be over $900 million. Increases in multiple birth rates are only observed for women over 30 and are greater for women who are married, white, or have a college degree. This is consistent with previous work, which finds that the mandates did not reduce disparities in treatment use. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Kasey S. Buckles, 2013. "Infertility Insurance Mandates And Multiple Births," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(7), pages 775-789, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:22:y:2013:i:7:p:775-789
    DOI: 10.1002/hec.2850
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. M. Kate Bundorf & Melinda Henne & Laurence Baker, 2007. "Mandated Health Insurance Benefits and the Utilization and Outcomes of Infertility Treatments," NBER Working Papers 12820, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Lucie Schmidt, 2005. "Infertility Insurance Mandates and Fertility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 204-208, May.
    3. Ian Ayres & Steven D. Levitt, 1998. "Measuring Positive Externalities from Unobservable Victim Precaution: An Empirical Analysis of Lojack," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(1), pages 43-77.
    4. Marianne Bitler & Lucie Schmidt, 2012. "Utilization of Infertility Treatments: The Effects of Insurance Mandates," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 49(1), pages 125-149, February.
    5. Schmidt, Lucie, 2007. "Effects of infertility insurance mandates on fertility," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 431-446, May.
    6. Marianne Bitler & Lucie Schmidt, 2006. "Health disparities and infertility: impacts of state-level insurance mandates," Department of Economics Working Papers 2006-04, Department of Economics, Williams College, revised Nov 2006.
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    Cited by:

    1. Gershoni, Naomi & Low, Corinne, 2021. "The power of time: The impact of free IVF on Women’s human capital investments," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    2. Sarah Kroeger & Giulia La Mattina, 2017. "Assisted reproductive technology and women’s choice to pursue professional careers," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 30(3), pages 723-769, July.
    3. Joelle Abramowitz, 2017. "Assisted Reproductive Technology and Women’s Timing of Marriage and Childbearing," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 38(1), pages 100-117, March.
    4. Shen, Yichen & Noguchi, Haruko, 2021. "Impacts of anticancer drug parity laws on mortality rates," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 272(C).
    5. Sarah Kroeger & Giulia La Mattina, 2015. "Assisted Reproductive Technology and Women�s Choice to Pursue Professional Careers," Working Papers 0115, University of South Florida, Department of Economics.

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