World Fertility Data

World Fertility Data 2019 presents age-specific fertility rates, total fertility and mean age at childbearing for 201 countries or areas of the world. It includes empirical data from civil registration systems, population censuses, and sample surveys available as of August 2019 and covers the time period from 1950 to the present.

The dataset builds on the historical repository of demographic data and census and survey reports collected over the past 50 years by the Population Division and Statistics Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Estimates based on data compiled from civil registration systems are generally obtained from National Statistical Offices. Additional sources of data include the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), the Reproductive Health Surveys (RHS), the Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat), the Human Fertility Database (HFD), the Human Fertility Collection (HFC), the Pan-Arab Project for Child Development Surveys (PAPCHILD), the Pan-Arab Project for Family Health Survey (PAPFAM), national surveys, as well as fertility estimates produced by the Population Division of DESA.

Note. The empirical data used for deriving estimates in World Population Prospects 2019 are not necessarily the same as reported in World Fertility Data 2019 due to the time lag between the two publications. Moreover, fertility estimates in World Population Prospects 2019 may incorporate additional adjustments to account for cohort sizes in consecutive censuses.