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. 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:
17 May 2024

Next release:
To be announced

Return to 'Birth characteristics'

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 (361.9 kB)

Previous versions

Superseded files Reason for update Date superseded
xlsx (358.6 kB)
Correction See correction
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.
3 May 2024 14:41