Birth rate
total number of live births per 1,000 population divided by the length of a given period in years
Birth rate, also known as natality and crude birth rate, is the total number of live human births per 1,000 population for a given period divided by the length of the period in years. The number of live births is normally taken from a universal registration system for births, or population counts from a census. The birth rate (along with mortality and migration rates) is used to calculate population growth. The estimated average population may be taken as the mid-year population.
When the crude death rate is subtracted from the crude birth rate (CBR), the result is the rate of natural increase (RNI). This is equal to the rate of population change (excluding migration).
The total (crude) birth rate (which includes all births)—typically indicated as births per 1,000 population—is distinguished from a set of age-specific rates (the number of births per 1,000 persons, or more usually 1,000 females, in each age group). The first known use of the term "birth rate" in English was in 1856.
The average global birth rate was 17 births per 1,000 total population in 2024. The death rate was 7.9 per 1,000.
“Birth rate” enters the record as total number of live births per 1,000 population divided by the length of a given period in years. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Birth, rate and total can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q203516. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1856 and 2024.
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This entry incorporates text from “Birth rate” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.