Trump at his September 19th, 2024 rally in Nassau County, New York. Courtesy | Trump, Facebook

Former president Donald J. Trump’s promise to make in vitro fertilization free if elected this November is not the most effective method to bolster fertility rates, according to multiple Hillsdale College professors. 

“An IVF mandate is economically inefficient but politically expedient,” Assistant Professor of Economics Abel Winn said. “It allows Trump to signal that he is pro-family because IVF leads to more children. But at the same time, it lets him signal to moderate voters that he is not on board with the most conservative members of the pro-life movement.” 

During a recent campaign stop in Potterville, Michigan, the former president revealed plans to make insurance companies or the federal government pay for IVF to combat falling fertility rates. 

In 2023, American women, on average, gave birth to 1.62 babies, according to Axios. The CDC reported this 3% drop from 2022 as a new record low.

If made free, voters should expect a significant increase in IVF use, according to Winn. 

Fourteen states already have mandated insurance coverage for IVF, Winn said. A 2002 study found that residents of these states used IVF almost three times as much as those with no coverage mandate.  

“The additional costs would be paid by taxpayers or reflected in insurance rates,” Associate Professor of Economics Charles Steele said.

The Department of Health and Human Services cites 86,000 babies born due to IVF in 2021. Assuming an average cost of $60,000 per instance and a doubling of IVF use, Winn said Trump’s mandate would add about $5.2 billion to consumers’ annual health insurance premiums. 

Director of Economics Gary Wolfram said he does not think subsidizing IVF would have any more than a marginal effect on total fertility rates.

“Only 2% of births in the U.S. are from IVF,” Wolfram said. “So even if successful IVF doubled, there would be an increase of 2% in total births. This is hardly a game changer.” 

Rather, the decline mostly stems from the rising costs of raising children and changing cultural values, Steele said.

“Child-rearing became increasingly costly as a child became less of a contributor to family income through farmwork and the like, and more expensive because of healthcare and education costs,” Steele said.

Wolfram noted other policies to reduce the cost of having children would be more effective in increasing birthrate

“You could expand the child tax credit and reduce the income tax, allowing the head of the family to have more take-home pay and reduce the incentive for the other parent to go to work and thus be able to parent more children effectively,” Wolfram said.

Winn agreed that a child tax credit expansion would more efficiently promote child-rearing than an insurance mandate.

“If the government is going to subsidize family formation the most efficient way to do this is to pay parents for having a baby — either through a cash payment or refundable tax credit,” Winn said. “IVF costs roughly $60,000 per live birth. Suppose that the government offered half that amount – $30,000 – for every newborn regardless of the means of conception.” 

According to Steele, the function of government is to provide public goods that are normally very difficult to offer via private provision in the market. 

Steele said “public goods” are goods that are non-rival in consumption and for which it is hard to exclude those who do not pay, offering national defense and legal systems designed to protect rights as examples.

“I cannot see any part of the Constitution that empowers the federal government to intervene in health care and medicine,” Steele said. “IVF, abortion, and the like certainly do not fall into the category of public goods, so from the standpoint of economics, there is also no argument for this policy.”

Another effect of this “expansion of socialized healthcare” would be financial gain for IVF centers, Wolfram added.

“As Mises points out about government intervention, the unintended consequences are probably numerous,” Wolfram said. “But one would surely be firms promoting their IVF facilities and procedures.”