Just before midnight on July 25, 1978, at a small hospital in Oldham, England, a five-pound, twelve-ounce baby named Louise Joy Brown was delivered by cesarean section and quietly rearranged what was biologically possible. Her parents had been trying to conceive for nine years. The newspapers called her the world’s first “test tube baby.” The scientists behind her birth, Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe, had weathered a decade of failed attempts and public scorn to get there. Every July 25 since, the fertility world has marked her birthday as World IVF Day.
Today , your feed will fill with anniversary graphics. Here is what most of them will skip: IVF is no longer a miracle at the margins of medicine. It is one of the fastest-growing forms of care in the world, with more than 13 million babies born so far and the pace still accelerating. Below, we look at what that growth actually looks like in the newest data, what is driving it, and the part the celebration posts tend to leave out, which is who still cannot get anywhere near a fertility clinic.
How big is the boom, actually?
For decades, nobody had rigorously counted. Then, in 2025, researchers working with data from the International Committee Monitoring Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ICMART) published the first consistent global estimate in the journal Fertility and Sterility: between 10 and 13 million babies were born through IVF and related treatments from 1978 through 2018, and preliminary data suggests the total had reached 13 to 17 million by 2024. By the research team’s math, a baby conceived through assisted reproduction is now born roughly every 35 seconds.
The newest national numbers back up the trajectory. In the United States, more than 100,000 babies were born through IVF in a single year for the first time: 100,158 births from the 2024 treatment year, out of 449,772 cycles reported by 364 clinics to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART). That works out to roughly 1 in every 36 babies born in America, close to 3 percent of all U.S. births. “More than 100,000 babies born through IVF in a single year is a powerful reminder of how many families rely on reproductive medicine to build their families,” said Dr. Jennifer Eaton, SART’s president, announcing the milestone.
Europe tells the same story at larger scale. At the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) annual meeting this summer, registry researchers reported more than 1.15 million treatment cycles across 36 European countries in the 2023 data year, resulting in 247,021 children. Since Europe began keeping continent-wide records in 1997, clinics there have documented 15.8 million cycles and more than 3.2 million babies. And in Australia, one of the heaviest per-capita users of IVF in the world, 1 in 16 babies is now conceived through IVF, a figure that rises to 1 in 10 among women over 35, according to Professor Georgina Chambers of UNSW, who led the global counting study.
However you slice it, the direction is the same. What was a medical moonshot in 1978 is now, in many countries, a normal part of how families get made.
Why the boom, and why now
People are starting families later. Birth rates in the U.S. hit new lows in 2024, and the average age of first-time parents keeps climbing. As NPR’s 1A explored in a recent episode on the future of fertility, more people are delaying childbearing into the years when conception gets harder, which pushes more of them toward treatment.
The treatment itself got better and safer. This is the part of the story that deserves more attention than it gets. In the U.S., about 79 percent of embryo transfers now use elective single embryo transfer, and 97 percent of IVF births in 2024 were singletons, a dramatic change from the twin-heavy era of a decade ago. In Europe, frozen embryo transfer has grown to 43 percent of treatments, overtaking fresh IVF cycles. “The increase of frozen embryo transfer reflects a sustained commitment to improving both effectiveness and safety,” ESHRE’s Professor Diane De Neubourg noted with the new data. Safer, more flexible treatment lowers the barrier to trying it.
More kinds of families are using it. In Australia, 17 percent of all cycles now involve same-sex couples and single women. IVF’s growth is not only about infertility in the clinical sense; it is also about who gets to build a family at all.
And the money is finally moving, at least in some places. Roughly half of large U.S. employers now offer some IVF coverage, though surveys suggest many workers have no idea their benefits include it. State fertility coverage mandates expanded again in 2026 legislative sessions, and IVF has become a rare point of bipartisan political attention, complete with a federal initiative aimed at lowering costs. Worth knowing: ASRM’s own analysis of that federal initiative concludes it falls well short of the insurance coverage requirement that would actually move the needle for most patients. Progress, yes. Solved, no.
What the anniversary posts leave out
Here is the myth World IVF Day can accidentally sell: if IVF is everywhere, it must be within reach.
The reality is harsher. The World Health Organization estimates that 1 in 6 people of reproductive age will experience infertility at some point in their lives, in every region of the world and at every income level. The treatment boom, meanwhile, is concentrated almost entirely in high-income countries. “IVF is expensive and complex. It requires skilled personnel, medications and high-tech labs,” says Professor David Adamson, chair of ICMART, explaining why low- and middle-income countries remain largely locked out.
Even where clinics exist, cost decides who walks through the door. In some regions, a single IVF cycle can cost double the average annual household income, and most countries still rely heavily on patients paying out of pocket. In the U.S., a cycle typically runs $15,000 to $30,000 or more before insurance, and because most people need more than one, cumulative costs can reach $60,000. The map decides a lot. So does the paycheck.
That gap is exactly why the WHO issued its first-ever global guideline on infertility in November 2025: 40 recommendations pushing countries to treat fertility care as health care, to fund it accordingly, to build stepwise treatment pathways that do not begin and end with the most expensive option, and to include psychosocial support as part of care rather than an afterthought.
“Infertility is one of the most overlooked public health challenges of our time.”
The question worth asking on Saturday
Louise Brown turns 48 this week. She has spent her whole life as proof of concept for an idea people once called impossible, and by the time you finish reading this piece, several more babies will have been born the same way she was. That part of the story is settled.
The unsettled part is the other number: the 1 in 6 who will face infertility, most of whom will never be offered what worked in Oldham in 1978. The best way to honor World IVF Day is probably not another anniversary graphic. It is asking why, 48 years and 13 million babies later, access still depends so much on where you live and what you earn.
Resources
ICMART global IVF births study (UNSW summary) – the first consistent worldwide count of IVF births.
SART 2024 U.S. National Data announcement – the 100,000-baby milestone, with cycle counts and safety trends.
ESHRE European ART Monitoring report (2023 data) – Europe’s newest registry numbers, presented July 2026.
WHO first global infertility guideline – the 40 recommendations pushing countries to treat fertility care as health care.
NPR 1A: The Future of Fertility in 2026 – a 44-minute listen on cost, policy, and the emotional reality of treatment.
