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Yes, more U.S. men got vasectomies in the recession

Kim Painter
Special for USA TODAY
A father reaches for a baby's hand.  During the 2007-2009 recession, more men decided to limit their family sizes by having vasectomies, a new study shows

During the great recession of 2007-2009, urologists across the country reported more men than usual getting vasectomies amid worries about supporting bigger families in tough times. Now data from a nationwide survey backs up those anecdotal reports: Vasectomy rates really did rise as the economy tanked.

Before the recession, 5.8% of men surveyed had had a vasectomy; after the recession, 7.5% had, say researchers who looked at data on 8,000 men ages 18 and over.

During the recession, "men in our study were reporting less income, they were less likely to be working full time and were less likely to have medical insurance," says researcher Bobby Najari, a fellow in male reproductive medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York. "In spite of all that, vasectomy increased."

Vasectomy is an outpatient surgery in which tubes carrying sperm from the testicles to the penis are cut or sealed. It does not affect sexual functioning but makes a man infertile.

Najari will present the study Monday at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Honolulu. The data, collected between 2006 and 2010, come from the federally funded National Survey for Family Growth.

Najari says he and his colleagues also looked back at data from 2002 to see if an increase in vasectomies began in the years before the recession. They found no evidence it had.

The researchers also checked to see if their recession-era results changed when they factored in age, race, and income. They still found a 35% increase in vasectomies after the recession began.

The study does not prove that financial worries drove men to the procedure. But other findings – including a well-documented decline in U.S. birth rates during and immediately after the recession – suggest that lean years do lead couples to put off or decide against having more children.

The study backs what Cleveland urologist J. Stephen Jones says he saw during the high-anxiety days of early 2009. Men "were coming out of the woodwork" to request vasectomies, and many were motivated by money woes, he says.

Some, he says, wanted to fit in a long-planned surgery before losing their health insurance. Others, he says, "clearly felt that the commitment of having a child was not something they were comfortable with in that environment." Jones, who was not involved in the new study, is vice president for regional medical operations at Cleveland Clinic.

A vasectomy is a particularly cost-effective way to stop having children, Najari notes: A 2012 study found it cost an average of $708, compared with $2,912 for female sterilization. Tubal ligation surgeries for women also have higher complication rates than vasectomies.

But the out-of-pocket costs for couples may be changing: Under the Affordable Care Act, insurers must cover the costs of women's contraceptive methods, including sterilization, but don't have to cover vasectomies.

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