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Completed cohort fertility rate: births per woman

HFD

What you should know about this indicator

  • Shows the total number of children that women born in the same year have by the end of their childbearing years.
  • Helps compare how many children different generations of women have on average.
  • Calculated using the actual number of births recorded at different ages throughout a woman's childbearing years.
Completed cohort fertility rate: births per woman
HFD
The average number of children born to women in the current cohort over their lifetime.
Source
Human Fertility Database (2025) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
October 22, 2025
Next expected update
October 2026
Date range
1876–1974
Unit
births per woman

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

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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: Completed cohort fertility rate: births per woman”, 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/20260518-090244/grapher/cohort-fertility-rate.html [online resource] (archived on May 18, 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. “Completed cohort fertility rate: births per woman – HFD” [dataset]. Human Fertility Database, “Human Fertility Database” [original data]. Retrieved May 18, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260518-090244/grapher/cohort-fertility-rate.html (archived on May 18, 2026).

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