Live births

Live births by age of mother/father, sex, marital status, country of birth, socio-economic status, previous children and area.

Highlights

Baby names in England and Wales: 2017

What's in the bulletin?

  • Oliver remained the most popular first name given to baby boys in England and Wales in 2017, a position held since 2013; Harry and George have remained in second and third places respectively since 2016.
  • Olivia remained the most popular first name given to baby girls in 2017, a position held since 2016; Amelia remained in second place and Isla moved up to third.
  • Leo replaced Thomas in the top 10 for boys, whilst Hunter and Ralph replaced Aaron and Jasper in the top 100 in 2017.
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Births in England and Wales: 2017

What's in the bulletin?

  • There were 679,106 live births in England and Wales in 2017, a decrease of 2.5% from 2016 and the lowest number of live births since 2006.
  • In 2017, the total fertility rate (TFR) declined for the fifth consecutive year to 1.76 children per woman, from 1.81 in 2016.
  • Fertility rates decreased for every age group in 2017, except for women aged 40 years and over, where rates increased by 1.3% to 16.1 births per 1,000 women in that age group, reaching the highest level since 1949.
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Baby names explorer

Use our interactive tool to compare changes in the top 100 baby names for boys and girls since 1904.

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Datasets related to Live births

  • Births in England and Wales: summary tables

    Annual summary statistics on live births and stillbirths, by sex, age of mother, whether inside marriage or civil partnership, percentage of non-UK-born mothers, birth rates and births by mothers' area of usual residence.

  • Births by mothers’ usual area of residence in the UK

    Live births in the UK by area of usual residence of mother. The tables contain summary data for local authorities and local health boards (within Wales) including figures by age of mother.

  • Baby names for girls in England and Wales

    Rank and count of the top names for baby girls, changes in rank since the previous year and breakdown by country, region and month of birth.

  • Baby names for boys in England and Wales

    Rank and count of the top names for baby boys, changes in rank since the previous year and breakdown by country, region and month of birth.

  • Birth characteristics

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

  • Births by parents’ characteristics

    Annual live births in England and Wales by age of mother and father, type of registration, median interval between births, number of previous live-born children and National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-SEC). The associated publication that uses the 2017 data has been combined with the publication for the Birth characteristics in England and Wales 2017 release.

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Publications related to Live births

Statistical bulletins

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Methodology related to Live births

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