How much does free fertility treatment cost?

The British government pays for free fertility treatment to infertile couples. How much does it cost the nation?

Suprisingly, the answer is that in the long run, not only does it not cost the country a penny, but it actually makes money, despite the initial price tag. (On the other hand, in the very long run, it isn't certain that having an ever increasing population is a good idea. For starters, I don't like soylent green -- I prefer my long pork au naturel.)

Yahoo quotes from a Reuters report:

Professor William Ledger, a fertility expert at the University of Sheffield in England, looked at the average cost of producing a baby through in-vitro fertilization and the benefit to the government over the person's lifetime.

He and a group of mathematicians and economists used a modeling exercise and calculated that for the average 13,000 pounds ($23,960) it costs to produce a child through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) the government would recoup 143,000 pounds in taxes alone.
[...]
"The average person over a lifetime will contribute 143,000 pounds to the state in benefits if they are an IVF child born to a mother of age 35," he explained.

Link to a Yahoo news article which will probably disappear before long.

This just goes to show that when it comes to economics, not everything is what it seems. Giving services away from nothing can be a money spinner, and compassion to the infertile comes with an average profit margin of one thousand percent!