I feel like so much of these conversations lack the high level questioning around why IVF and related technology has become so prominent and increased in usage. Is the rate of fertility problems increasing? And why?
For these reasons, there's lots of pressure to delay starting a family, and it's no surprise that IVF has seen increased demand. Some companies (i.e. Facebook) even provide their female employees a benefit that covers freezing their eggs. This is somewhat controversial, as some would argue that Facebook (and other companies, and perhaps our culture in general) should instead focus on reducing the professional cost of starting a family.
Therefore, these findings about growing human eggs could have great significance. I have friends grappling with this issue right now, so I understand how this discovery could be a great help to them. I hope that provides some useful context...
Few professions are important enough to spare a passing thought over compared to the importance of raising children IMO.
I mean Facebook? Do people working there, for example, really think social data mining for advertising is important in some way? Sure, income is important, but people don't say they want to protect their income, they always talk about career progression (which is conceptually unrelated).
We've got plenty of people, making ways for people to sacrifice everything to a job without failing to reproduce seems pretty counter to any need.
That's a pretty critical view of things. I think a more objective view is that motherhood is costly for the mother in time and attention, and generally reduces the time and effort she puts into her career.
Whether people operating in the business world should be encouraged or forced to give preferential treatment to mothers so that motherhood doesn't become a career disadvantage is an open question. One could argue it would be unfair to those women who choose to forego or forestall motherhood to dedicate more time to their careers.
Male testosterone production has been decreasing as well, at a population level. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17062768
Also interesting to note that medical academia has been gradually lowering the requirements for what is considered a healthy testosterone concentration. Minimal acceptable bioavailable testosterone for a healthy young man used to be considered on the order of 500ng/dL, now it’s generally considered around 300ng/dL.
Only a generation ago the median age of birth was like 23 and now it's 27 or so, but that doesn't account for the edge cases. A lot of women have careers now that they didn't have a generation ago and delay childbirth because of it.
Also, there are a lot of studies coming out recently that male fertility is 1/2 of what it was just a generation ago (we make 1/2 as much sperm as we used to). No one know why yet, they assume it's environmental or diet related.
Now, the tech has gotten good enough, and the price -- while still out of reach for many -- is affordable for an increasingly large segment of the population.
TLDR: It's not being driven by an increase in demand, but rather an increase in supply.
With nearly 8 billion people on the planet, the answer to that is a resounding NO. Go and look at the charts...