Effects of Infertility Insurance Mandates on Fertility

Lucie Schmidt

Labor and Demography from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Infertility currently affects over 6 million individuals in the United States. While most health insurance plans nationwide do not cover infertility diagnoses or treatments, to date fifteen states have enacted some form of infertility insurance mandate. In this paper, I use data from the Vital Statistics Detail Natality Data and Census population estimates to examine whether these state-level mandates were successful in increasing fertility rates. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I exploit variation in the enactment of mandates both across states and over time, and identify control groups that should not have been affected by infertility coverage. My results suggest that the mandates significantly increase first birth rates for women over 35, and these results are robust to a number of specification tests.

Keywords: infertility; impaired fecundity; insurance mandates; fertility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2005-11-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ias
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 33
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/lab/papers/0511/0511014.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Effects of infertility insurance mandates on fertility (2007)
Working Paper: Effects of Infertility Insurance Mandates on Fertility (2005)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpla:0511014

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