Share of children who were born outside of marriage
- Description
Share of all children born to mothers who were not married at the time of birth.
- Data source
- OECD (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
- Unit
- %
- Date range
- 1960-2024
- Last updated
- 2026-10-09
- Next expected update
- 2027-10-09
- Managed by
- Edouard Mathieu
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Frequently asked questions
How did Our World in Data process this data?
How did Our World in Data process this 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.
Documentation from data sources
Principal data source
Principal data source
Births to mothers whose legal marital status at the time of the birth is other than married. This includes births to mothers who are single or who are cohabiting with a partner outside of marriage, births to mothers who are divorced or widowed, and births to mothers who are living with a partner in a "common-law" or "de facto" union (unless their legal marital status at the time of birth is also 'married').
For Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and Canada (1960-1973 only), data refer to ex-nuptial/out-of-wedlock births, that is, where the child's parents are not registered as married to each other (or, for New Zealand, in a civil union with each other) at the time of birth.
The "share of births outside of marriage" is calculated as the number of births to women whose legal marital status at the time of the birth is other than married [or, for Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and Canada (1960-1973 only), the number of ex-nuptial/out-of-wedlock births], divided by all births in the given year.
Data sources
OECD – OECD Family Database – Share of Births Outside Marriage
OECD – OECD Family Database – Share of Births Outside Marriage
Data on children born outside of marriage from the OECD Family Database. The OECD Family Database provides cross-national indicators on family outcomes and family policies across the OECD countries, its enhanced engagement partners and EU member states.
OECD (2025). OECD Family Database.How to cite
How to cite this page
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: Share of children who were born outside of marriage”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre, Veronika Samborska, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, and Max Roser (2020) - “Marriages and Divorces”. Data adapted from OECD. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261009-100303/grapher/share-of-births-outside-marriage.html [online resource] (archived on October 9, 2026).How to cite this data
How to cite this data
If you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
OECD (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in DataFull citation
OECD (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Share of children who were born outside of marriage” [dataset]. OECD, “OECD Family Database – Share of Births Outside Marriage” [original data]. Retrieved October 9, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261009-100303/grapher/share-of-births-outside-marriage.html (archived on October 9, 2026).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. 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.
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