September 19, 2013 | News

Launch of the Human Fertility Collection

The Human Fertility Collection (HFC), a database that provides free access to a variety of international fertility data, is now online. It is a companion project to the Human Fertility Database (HFD). The geographic coverage of the HFC includes less developed parts of the world and long time series of historical data.

Demographers and other users familiar with the HFD know that this database contains high-quality data, which are produced from the original birth and population counts using a uniform methodology and a set of very rigorous quality checks. The HFD therefore includes data for a limited number of countries with well-established statistical systems.The HFC has been created to supplement the HFD and to incorporate fertility data that are valuable for fertility research but cannot be included in the HFD. Thus, the geographic coverage of the HFC is much broader than that of the HFD, and includes less developed parts of the world.

“The HFC enables us to publish interesting fertility data for a greater number of countries with vital statistics that are of somewhat lower quality. This database relies on ready fertility rates rather than on the original birth counts. It also allows us to provide long time series of historical data,” explains MPIDR researcher Aiva Jasilioniene, who is the HFD project coordinator.

The HFC data are assembled from a wide range of data sources, not all are based on official vital statistics. At present, the HFC displays period fertility data for all of the birth orders combined, and by birth order for 73 countries and areas. The data for all of the birth orders combined can be found since 1751 (Sweden), and the earliest year for which birth-order-specific data are available is 1917 (the USA). In the future more fertility dimensions (region, country of birth, marital status, etc.) will be included.

The HFC is managed jointly by MPIDR researchers of the Laboratory of Demographic Data and their collaborators at the Vienna Institute of Demography in Austria.