Dataset(s): Birth characteristics

Annual live births in England and Wales by sex, birthweight, gestational age, ethnicity and month, maternities by place of birth and with multiple births, and stillbirths by age of parents and calendar quarter.

This is an accredited National Statistic. Click for information about types of official statistics. Contact:
Data Insights and Data Science team

Release date:
19 January 2023

Next release:
November to December 2023 (provisional)

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Provides files to download data as it existed for this dataset on previous dates.

Statistics are most often revised for 1 of 2 reasons:

  1. For certain statistics initial estimates are released with the expectation that these may be revised and updated as further data becomes available.
  2. Revisions may also be made when methods or systems are changed.

These types of planned revisions should not be confused with errors in released statistics, which are genuine mistakes. Such mistakes occur rarely and, when they do happen, corrections are made in a timely manner, announced and clearly explained to users in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics (Principle 2, Practice 7).

Latest version

xlsx (381.2 kB)

Previous versions

Superseded files Reason for update Date superseded
xlsx (380.0 kB)
Correction See correction
Our Birth characteristics dataset contained an error affecting several tables in our 2021 edition. This is the result of an error in the processing of birthweights depending on gestational, age and has affected Tables 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 in the dataset. The error affected counts in the low birthweight, low gestational age, implausible, and not stated categories, and has now been corrected. A linkage error has been identified for births registered in Northern Ireland, where some records were not correctly matched with National Statistics Postcode Lookup. This affected counts for Northern Irish geographies in Table 1 in our 2021 edition of this dataset, and has now been corrected. An error was identified in Birth Characteristics 2021 Table 4, where the wrong name for Registration type category was used. This was because of a human error and has now been corrected. An error was identified in how the Percentage of live births under 2.5kg in Table 1 was computed in our 2019, 2020 and 2021 editions of this dataset. This was because of human error, where the calculations were not adjusted following changes to processing implausible birthweights in 2019. This has now been corrected. A processing error was identified for figures broken down by Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) in Table 12 in our 2020 edition of this dataset. This affected figures for Wales and was the result of human error, where an older edition of Welsh indices of deprivations was linked with the postcode of the mother's residence. These figures have now been corrected. An error was identified for national Total Fertility Rates (TFR) in Table 1 in our 2021 edition of this dataset. Values for UK, England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland were affected. This was because of human error, where five-year age bands were used to compute TFR instead of single year of age. These figures have now been corrected. More information on the methodology is available in the User Guide for Births Statistics.
3 May 2024 13:31
xlsx (378.1 kB)
Correction See correction
An error was identified for birthweights and how implausible birthweights were calculated. This happened because of a technical fault when processing the data. The error affected Tables 5, 6, 7 and 19 of the 2021 edition of this dataset (Birth characteristics: 2021). The incorrect figures have been revised in the dataset.
6 March 2023 11:00