Infertility Down Slightly Among Married Women

American couples are not as infertile as it might seem.

Despite a boom in fertility treatments, a new government study shows the percentage of married couples having trouble conceiving has actually dropped slightly.

About 6 percent of married women fail to get pregnant after at least a year of sex without contraception. That's down from less than 9 percent some three decades ago.

That may seem surprising given how many women seek help to get pregnant. The use of fertility treatments, including in vitro fertilization, has doubled in the last decade. But that increase is driven by larger numbers of women trying to have children in their 30s and 40s, when fertility declines.

The report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was released Wednesday.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.