Discuss the article: where babies come from: supply and demand in an infant marketplace economics
Answers
Answer:
say the word “market,” and what comes to mind? Financial markets, maybe, or supermarkets. There are markets in real estate, markets in used cars, markets filled with farmers selling green beans and cheese. But a market in human fertility—sperm, eggs, hormones, surrogate mothers, embryos? Babies, or the means to make them, aren’t supposed to be sold. They aren’t supposed to be bought. They aren’t supposed to have prices fixed upon them.
But there is a market for babies, one that stretches across the globe and encompasses hundreds of thousands of people. This market doesn’t work like the markets for green beans or mortgages. Its high prices are more stubborn than the usual adjustments in supply and demand normally produce, it can never fully provide all the goods that are desired, and the role of property rights—the underpinning of most modern markets—remains either ambiguous or contested.
What has created this market is a deep and persistent demand from people who have been denied the blessings of reproduction, along with a wide and steadily increasing supply of ways to produce babies when nature proves inadequate. It includes businesses such as for-profit fertility clinics and drug companies that sell their wares in this market, charging often hefty sums along the way. In 2001, nearly 41,000 children in the United States were born via in vitro fertilization (IVF). Roughly 6,000 sprang from donated eggs; almost 600 were carried in surrogate, or rented, wombs.
Some people lament the very existence of this baby trade, insisting that reproduction—like love or honor—should never be sold. Some argue that the cutting edge of reproductive science violates the rules of nature and degrades all of the participants. Yet the baby business is alive and well and growing. And the demand for it is so widespread and powerful that any attempts to stamp it out would almost certainly fail or do harm. If the baby trade were to move to a donor model like the one governing organs, for example, it would probably face comparable shortages: fewer women willing to donate eggs, fewer surrogate mothers, and a smaller supply of sperm. At the same time, a black market for these components would probably arise, much as it has for kidneys and other vital organs. Similarly, if governments were to outlaw the trade completely, people desperate for children would scramble to find illicit providers, subjecting themselves to legal and medical risk. Unlike outlawed trades such as drugs or prostitution, moreover, the baby business creates a product—children, for people who want them—that is inherently good. The market may make people uncomfortable, but it’s more efficient than the alternatives, and it provides inestimable value to those who choose to purchase.
Even so, the United States is the only major country in the world whose national government has chosen not to address the complex issues of equity, access, and cost that are raised by the baby trade. The federal government has been exceedingly wary of imposing limits on high-tech baby making, preferring to let the courts, the markets, or the state legislatures sort things out. (See the exhibit “Rules, Regulations, and the Gray Area.”)
Babies trade is a new market in most developed economies such as the US and Europe.
Explanation:
- Trading babies is an embarrassing activity as love cannot be traded at all.
- In many countries, this a new business to rent wombs and donate eggs.
- Surrogacy is a catching trend as many people in developed countries face hormonal disorders.
- There is an attached price tag for surrogacy and IVF (in-vitro fertilization) starting from $10000 to $50000.
Supply and demand in infant market:
https://brainly.in/question/13467470