Natality Information

Live Births
  • Natality Information

The Natality online databases report counts of live births occurring within the United States to U.S. residents. Counts can be obtained by a variety of demographic characteristics, such as state and county of residence, mother's race, and mother's age, and health and medical items, such as tobacco use, method of delivery, and congenital anomalies. The data are derived from birth certificates. For more information, refer to Natality data description.

Provisional Natality Data
Current Final Natality Data

The Natality data are offered in four separate online databases because of changes in data reporting standards beginning in 2003. The race group categories changed from 8 categories for the years 1995-2002 to 4 "bridged-race" categories for the years 2003-2006. Beginning in 2003, county-level data are available for 66 additional counties, because the 2003-2006 data reference the year 2000 census to determine suppression for counties with populations less than 100,000 persons. The 1995-2002 data reference the 1990 census to determine county-level data suppression. Beginning in 2007, data are reported from the the 2003 U.S. standard Certificate of Live Birth. With the implementation of the 2003 U.S. standard Certificate of Live Birth by the states, some data items are not comparable with the previous 1989 revision, resulting in changes to the data items available here. Beginning with year 2007, data for five new birth anomalies are available, and data for five maternal risk factors are no longer available. Beginning with year 2016, data for many additional items (mostly medical and health items) are available. "Bridged-race" categories are not available in the expanded database for 2016 and later years. "Bridged-race" categories are not available after year 2019.

Page last reviewed: October 03, 2023
Content source: CDC WONDER