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Data

Number of live births

HFD

What you should know about this indicator

  • Shows the total number of live births, considering all mothers (regardless of their age) and all their parities (regardless of the order).
  • This indicator serves as a foundational statistic for calculating other fertility measures.
Number of live births
HFD
The total number of live births recorded in a given year.
Source
Human Fertility Database (2025) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
October 22, 2025
Next expected update
October 2026
Date range
1891–2024
Unit
births

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Human Fertility Database

The HFD is entirely based on one and the same type of initial data - officially registered birth counts by calendar year, mother's age (and/or cohort) and (whenever possible) biological birth order. These data, together with total female population exposure from the Human Mortality Database (www.mortality.org) and parity-specific female population exposure from selected population censuses, population registers, or large-scale surveys, are further processed using a uniform set of methods. The major HFD output includes detailed data on births, unconditional and conditional fertility rates, cohort and period fertility tables as well as selected aggregate indicators such as total fertility rates, mean ages at childbearing, and parity progression ratios.

For each country, there are four blocks of data provided:

  • Summary Indicators
  • Age-Specific Data
  • Fertility Tables
  • Input Data

More details at https://www.humanfertility.org/Data/ExplanatoryNotes, and https://www.humanfertility.org/File/GetDocumentFree/Docs/methods.pdf.

Retrieved on
October 22, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.humanfertility.org/Home/Index
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Human Fertility Database. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Germany) and Vienna Institute of Demography (Austria). Available at www.humanfertility.org (data downloaded on 2025-10-22).

The HFD is entirely based on one and the same type of initial data - officially registered birth counts by calendar year, mother's age (and/or cohort) and (whenever possible) biological birth order. These data, together with total female population exposure from the Human Mortality Database (www.mortality.org) and parity-specific female population exposure from selected population censuses, population registers, or large-scale surveys, are further processed using a uniform set of methods. The major HFD output includes detailed data on births, unconditional and conditional fertility rates, cohort and period fertility tables as well as selected aggregate indicators such as total fertility rates, mean ages at childbearing, and parity progression ratios.

For each country, there are four blocks of data provided:

  • Summary Indicators
  • Age-Specific Data
  • Fertility Tables
  • Input Data

More details at https://www.humanfertility.org/Data/ExplanatoryNotes, and https://www.humanfertility.org/File/GetDocumentFree/Docs/methods.pdf.

Retrieved on
October 22, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.humanfertility.org/Home/Index
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Human Fertility Database. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Germany) and Vienna Institute of Demography (Austria). Available at www.humanfertility.org (data downloaded on 2025-10-22).

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Number of live births”, part of the following publication: Saloni Dattani, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, and Max Roser (2025) - “Fertility Rate”. Data adapted from Human Fertility Database. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260410-215714/grapher/total-live-births-hfd.html [online resource] (archived on April 10, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Human Fertility Database (2025) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Human Fertility Database (2025) – processed by Our World in Data. “Number of live births – HFD” [dataset]. Human Fertility Database, “Human Fertility Database” [original data]. Retrieved April 10, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260410-215714/grapher/total-live-births-hfd.html (archived on April 10, 2026).

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