☀ Key Stats
◆ Daughters whose parents reported fertility problems were 2.6 percentage points, or 19.4%, more likely to report fertility problems themselves.
◆ On the male line, fertility problems were 1.7 percentage points, or 13.5%, more likely among sons from families with a parental history of fertility difficulties.
◆ Women with a parental history of fertility problems were 26.1% more likely to report using fertility treatment, an increase of 1.7 percentage points.
◆ The comparable increase in fertility-treatment use on the male line was 13.5%, or 0.8 percentage point.
◆ The main Swedish sample included 604,697 people born between 1982 and 1995, and about 12% had parents who had reported fertility problems.
◆ Among biological and adopted children raised in the same households, adopted children were about 44% less likely to report infertility than the biological children of the same parents.
◆ Biological children in those families used fertility treatment at almost twice the rate of their adopted siblings, although this sibling comparison was based on a relatively small sample.
◆ Among people who underwent assisted reproductive technology, treatment success showed no statistically meaningful difference based on whether their parents had reported fertility problems.
◆ The ART analysis covered 7,000 women and 5,342 men who underwent treatment between 2007 and 2019.
◆ Successful ART outcomes were recorded for about 74.2% of women and 70.8% of men in those treatment samples.
◆ Among previously married couples, having a family history of fertility problems on at least one side was associated with a 1.25-percentage-point higher probability of divorce, an increase of about 18% relative to the sample mean.
◆ Among women who reported fertility problems, those from affected families experienced infertility for about 5.8% longer and were 6.4% more likely to report at least two years of difficulty conceiving.
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Daughters whose parents had reported fertility problems were 19.4% more likely to report fertility difficulties themselves, according to a new NBER research paper.
The difference was equivalent to an increase of 2.6 percentage points after accounting for age at first birth and several family-background characteristics.
A similar but smaller pattern appeared among sons.
Men whose parents had reported fertility difficulties were associated with a 1.7-percentage-point increase in reported fertility problems, equivalent to about 13.5% of the average rate.
The findings come from linked Swedish population and health registers covering families across nearly four decades.
They show a strong intergenerational association, but they do not establish that fertility problems are inherited entirely through genetics.
The association was stronger among daughters
The researchers examined people born in Sweden between 1982 and 1995 and connected their fertility histories with reports recorded when their parents were having children.
The main underlying sample included 604,697 people.
About 12% of the sample had parents who reported having experienced difficulty conceiving.
For the main analysis of infertility reports, the researchers focused on people who had subsequently had at least one child themselves.
That produced samples of 113,090 women and about 87,900 men.
Among women, parental fertility difficulties were associated with a 2.6-percentage-point increase in the probability of reporting fertility problems.
The average reporting rate was about 13%, making the estimated increase equivalent to 19.4% of the mean.
On the male line, the comparable increase was 1.7 percentage points, or 13.5%.
For men, fertility difficulties were recorded through reports made by their female partners during pregnancy, regardless of which partner was responsible for the difficulty conceiving.
The researchers controlled for birth cohorts, region, maternal education, paternal income, immigrant background and, in their preferred comparison, age at first birth.
The intergenerational relationship changed little after accounting for those factors.
Fertility treatment use also differed by family history
The researchers found a similar pattern when they examined whether people had taken action against fertility problems.
For women, having parents who had reported fertility problems was associated with a 1.7-percentage-point increase in fertility-treatment use.
That represented an increase of about 26.1% relative to the average treatment rate in the female sample.
On the male line, parental fertility difficulties were associated with a 0.8-percentage-point increase in treatment use, or about 13.5% of the mean.
The difference between men and women was particularly noticeable at the treatment stage.
Among women, the relative increase in treatment use was larger than the increase in reporting fertility problems, while the two increases were almost identical among men.
Adopted siblings help test the role of family awareness
One possible explanation is that children who grow up hearing about their parents’ fertility difficulties become more likely to recognize or report similar problems themselves.
The researchers used an unusual comparison between adopted and biological children raised in the same Swedish households to investigate that possibility.
During the period studied, couples generally needed a documented history of sterility to qualify for adoption in Sweden.
Some of those couples later had biological children, allowing the researchers to compare siblings who grew up in the same household but differed in biological relatedness to their parents.
Adopted children were about 44% less likely to report infertility than the biological children of the same parents.
The biological children also used fertility treatment at almost twice the rate of their adopted siblings.
If family awareness alone explained the intergenerational association, the researchers reasoned that adopted and biological children raised in the same households should have shown more similar patterns.
Instead, the results point toward biological or other factors shared between biological parents and children.
The sibling evidence does not identify a specific genetic mechanism, and the core comparison was relatively small.
The first three sibling analyses involved 493 people, making those estimates less precise than the results from the much larger population sample.
Treatment success was similar regardless of family history
A family history of fertility problems was associated with greater use of treatment, but not with worse outcomes once assisted reproductive treatment began.
The researchers analyzed Sweden’s Q-IVF Registry, which records assisted reproductive treatments and their outcomes.
The analysis covered 7,000 women and 5,342 men from the main study cohorts who underwent at least one ART cycle between 2007 and 2019.
A successful outcome was defined as a live birth resulting from a treatment cycle.
The average success measure was about 74.2% for women and 70.8% for men.
The researchers found no statistically or economically meaningful association between parental fertility problems and treatment success.
For women, the statistical range around the estimate ruled out a reduction in success larger than 3.9 percentage points.
For men, it ruled out a reduction larger than 1.5 percentage points.
The result suggests that while people from affected families were more likely to need fertility treatment, their family background did not appear to reduce their chances of benefiting from ART once treatment began.
Some women reported longer periods of infertility
The study also examined the duration of fertility difficulties among people who reported experiencing them.
Among women, those from families with a history of fertility problems reported infertility spells that were about 5.8% longer.
They were also 6.4% more likely to report having difficulty conceiving for at least two years.
The researchers did not find a statistically significant equivalent pattern among men.
The paper notes that fertility treatment can also carry substantial financial costs.
It cites a cost of roughly 45,000–50,000 Swedish kronor, or about $4,300–$4,800, for a single IVF cycle in Sweden.
That was about 1.5 times the average monthly net income, according to the figures cited by the researchers, although Sweden’s universal health system covers initial treatment rounds for many couples.
Family fertility history was also associated with divorce
The researchers also examined whether fertility problems in previous generations were associated with relationship outcomes.
Among previously married couples, having a history of fertility problems on at least one side of the family was associated with a 1.25-percentage-point higher probability of divorce.
That represented an increase of about 18% relative to the mean divorce rate in the sample used for that analysis.
The association remained at almost the same level when the researchers excluded couples who appeared in the IVF registry.
That suggests the relationship was not simply the result of the experience of undergoing fertility treatment.
The study does not establish that fertility difficulties caused the additional divorces.
Other characteristics associated with a family’s fertility history could contribute to the relationship.
✦ Why it matters ✦
Infertility is a widespread health issue rather than a rare condition affecting a small number of families.
The World Health Organization estimates that roughly 1 in 6 people of reproductive age worldwide experience infertility at some point in their lives.
Understanding whether fertility difficulties cluster across generations therefore matters for future demand for reproductive health services.
The Swedish findings suggest that family fertility history contains information about an individual’s probability of experiencing difficulty conceiving.
At the same time, the treatment results provide an important counterpoint.
People from affected families were more likely to need assisted reproduction, but they were no less likely to have a successful ART outcome once they entered treatment.
The adopted-sibling comparison also helps distinguish family knowledge from other possible explanations.
The lower reporting and treatment rates among adopted children suggest that simply growing up in a household where fertility problems were known is unlikely to explain the entire intergenerational pattern.
But the study does not identify how much of the association is genetic, biological without being directly genetic, or related to other factors shared between biological parents and children.
The question may become increasingly relevant as children conceived through assisted reproduction reach reproductive age.
The authors note that their own estimates largely come from generations whose parents conceived before ART became widespread, so the study cannot determine whether assisted reproduction will change intergenerational patterns in the future.
ⓘ How to read the findings
This is an observational study using Swedish administrative and health-register data, not a randomized experiment.
The reported associations do not prove that parental fertility problems directly cause fertility problems in their children.
The researchers use the term “subfertility” for the underlying tendency of some families to experience difficulty conceiving, while registry reports of difficulty conceiving are described as infertility.
The main study sample contains 604,697 people born in Sweden between 1982 and 1995 whose parents supplied relevant information during prenatal care.
The main infertility-report analysis is smaller because it focuses on people who had at least one birth of their own: 113,090 women and roughly 87,900 men.
For men, fertility difficulties are recorded through reports from their female birth partners, so the data measure fertility problems experienced by the couple rather than a clinical male-only diagnosis.
The preferred estimates account for age at first birth as well as individual and parental birth cohorts, region of birth, maternal education, paternal income and parental immigrant background.
Some main fertility outcomes are observed only for people who eventually had a child, which could create selection if people with more severe infertility never entered the birth records.
The authors run alternative analyses, including older siblings and samples not conditioned in the same way on successful births, and report broadly similar intergenerational patterns.
The adopted-versus-biological sibling comparison is informative but much smaller than the main registry analysis, with 493 observations in its most restricted comparisons.
That comparison suggests that greater family awareness alone is unlikely to explain the findings, but it does not prove that genetics are the sole mechanism.
The ART-success analysis covers 7,000 women and 5,342 men who underwent treatment between 2007 and 2019.
The treatment-success result applies to people who entered ART treatment and should not be interpreted as a success rate for everyone experiencing infertility.
The divorce finding is also an association and does not establish that infertility or family fertility history caused relationship breakdown.
The study concerns Sweden, where health-care access, fertility treatment coverage, adoption rules and social conditions may differ from those in other countries.
The authors’ cohorts were largely born before assisted reproduction became widespread, so the paper cannot directly measure intergenerational fertility outcomes among large numbers of adults conceived through modern ART.
NBER Working Paper 35585 was released in August 2026 and has not been peer-reviewed through the process accompanying official NBER publications.
The study is one piece of evidence on fertility and family health history and should not be interpreted as personal medical advice.
