Method: We analyzed the education gradient associated with IVF by using the Danish administrative register panel data covering 100% of the Danish population from 1995 to 2009. We accounted for the differences in IVF success rates between education groups by controlling for differences in (1) access to IVF treatment, (2) health status, and (3) active learning on the process of IVF. We focused on women in their reproductive ages (25-45). Education was stratified into three groups: no high school, high school and some college, and College or advance degree. The fertility outcome was the chance of delivering a live birth through IVF. Conditioning on sample of women who received IVF treatments (N = 60,883), we ran linear probability regressions on dummy variable of IVF live birth and adjusted for age, patient's income, spousal income, marital status, treatment from public or private hospitals, diagnostic information on the cause of defects, number of procedures, and total costs of visiting general practitioner in the past year.
Result: Our findings suggest significant positive educational disparities in IVF success rates. Comparing with high school dropouts, patients with high school degree or some college education had 3.24 percentage points (p-value<0.0001) higher probability of getting a live birth through IVF. While for patients with college degree or high education, they had 5.85 percentage points (p-value < 0.0001) higher chance of getting a live birth compare with high school dropouts. We found that the time trend of education gradient for the college and higher degree was positive (0.5 percentage points, p-value = 0.002). This suggests that the gap of IVF success rates between patients with college degree and high school dropouts was widening over time.
Conclusion: A strong positive education gradient of IVF success rates is documented. Our findings suggest significant educational disparities in IVF success rates that go beyond age, differentials in access to IVF treatment, in health status and in learning ability across education groups. Further, we find that the education disparities in IVF success rates are widening over time.