Age and Fertility: What Are Your Chances of Bearing a Child at Each Age?

Henri F. Leridon, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)

The time necessary to conceive, the rate of foetal wastage and the risk of becoming permanently sterile are all increasing with age. For a couple wanting a child, the practical questions are the following: what are the chances if the woman is aged AW and the man aged AM to conceive within a reasonable delay (say, 6 or 12 months), or the risk of not conceiving at all? If the woman does conceive, what is her probability of having a live birth? We can also add an other question, in case of failure to conceive: what is the probability of conceiving (and delivering a baby) with the help of some medical techniques, such as hormonal stimulation, IVF, AID or ICSI? We can rather easily answer each of these questions separately, but their combination may lead to fallacious estimates, because the various components have been estimated separately and are partly overlapping.