The Human Fertility Database

The Human Fertility Database (HFD) is a joint project of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany and the Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) in Vienna, Austria, based at MPIDR. We seek to provide free and user-friendly access to detailed, well-documented and high-quality data on period and cohort fertility and thus to facilitate research on changes and inter-country differences in fertility in the past and in the modern era.

The HFD is entirely based on one and the same type of initial data - officially registered birth counts by calendar year, mother's age (and/or cohort) and (whenever possible) biological birth order. These data, together with total female population exposure from the Human Mortality Database (www.mortality.org) and parity-specific female population exposure from selected population censuses, population registers, or large-scale surveys, are further processed using a uniform set of methods. The major HFD output includes detailed data on births, unconditional and conditional fertility rates, cohort and period fertility tables as well as selected aggregate indicators such as total fertility rates, mean ages at childbearing, and parity progression ratios.

We seek to provide open, international access to these data. At present, the database contains detailed period and cohort fertility data for the following countries:

The contents of this website are still preliminary and are intended primarily for testing and evaluation. Researchers are free to use the data but should stay alert to emails from HFD about possible updates of the database that may influence their results. We look forward to hearing feedback - bad and good - from all users.

For more information, please begin by reading an overview of the database. If you have comments or questions, or trouble gaining access to the data, please contact us.

Joint project of the MPIDR and the VID, based at the MPIDR