Birth rate

Description: Number of live births in a year per 1,000 people in the population.
Data source: UN, World Population Prospects (2024) – processed by Our World in Data
Unit: births per 1,000 people
Date range: 1950-2023
Last updated: 2024-07-12
Next expected update: 2027-07-12
Managed by: Lucas Rodés-Guirao and Fiona Spooner

This is a crude birth rate — it is not adjusted for differences in age structure, so countries with younger populations tend to show higher rates even when individual women have the same number of children.
We also publish a long-run birth rate indicator covering earlier years.

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Frequently asked questions

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.

Read about our data pipeline

Data sources

United Nations – World Population Prospects

World Population Prospects 2024 is the 28th edition of the official estimates and projections of the global population that have been published by the United Nations since 1951. The estimates are based on all available sources of data on population size and levels of fertility, mortality and international migration for 237 countries or areas. If you have questions about this dataset, please refer to their FAQ. You can also explore data sources for each country or visit their main page for more details.

Retrieved on

July 11, 2024

Retrieved from

https://population.un.org/wpp/downloads/

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data.

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). World Population Prospects 2024, Online Edition.

United Nations – World Population Prospects – Interim Update

This is an interim update containing revised medium-variant estimates and projections for Togo.

Retrieved on

March 31, 2026

Retrieved from

https://population.un.org/wpp/downloads/

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data.

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). World Population Prospects 2024, Online Edition.

How to cite

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: Birth rate”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from United Nations. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261022-211721/grapher/crude-birth-rate.html [online resource] (archived on October 22, 2026).

How to cite this data

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

UN, World Population Prospects (2024) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

UN, World Population Prospects (2024) – processed by Our World in Data. “Birth rate – UN WPP” [dataset]. United Nations, “World Population Prospects”; United Nations, “World Population Prospects – Interim Update” [original data]. Retrieved October 22, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261022-211721/grapher/crude-birth-rate.html (archived on October 22, 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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