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Data

Fertility rate

period tables
See all data and research on:
Fertility Rate

What you should know about this indicator

  • Assumes current age-specific fertility rates remain constant throughout a woman's lifetime.
  • Does not account for potential changes in social, economic, or health conditions that could affect fertility rates.
Fertility rate
period tables
The average number of live births a hypothetical cohort of women would have at the end of their reproductive period if they were subject during their whole lives to the fertility rates of a given period and if they were not subject to mortality.
Source
UN WPP (2024); HFD (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
December 3, 2024
Next expected update
December 2025
Date range
1891–2023
Unit
live births per woman

Related research and writing

A dark blue background with a lighter blue world map superimposed over it. Yellow text that says Fertility Rate by Our World in Data

Fertility Rate

Max Roser
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Hannah Ritchie

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

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
November 19, 2024
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 2024-11-19).

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. More details at https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/.

Retrieved on
July 11, 2024
Retrieved from
https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/
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.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). World Population Prospects 2024, Online Edition.

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
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

The fertility data is constructed by combining data from multiple sources:

  • Before 1949: Historical estimates by Human Fertility Database (2024).

  • 1950-2023: Population records by the UN World Population Prospects (2024 revision).

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: Fertility rate”, part of the following publication: Max Roser (2014) - “Fertility Rate”. Data adapted from Human Fertility Database, United Nations. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman [online resource]
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:

UN WPP (2024); HFD (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

UN WPP (2024); HFD (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Fertility rate – period tables” [dataset]. Human Fertility Database, “Human Fertility Database”; United Nations, “World Population Prospects” [original data]. Retrieved December 11, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman