National Vital Statistics Birth and Death Data
Individual-level data from birth and death certificates in the US and US territories.
All births and deaths in the US and US territories
Access
This database is available to the public with limited geographic detail, or to researchers within the US United States by application with geographic detail. Vital records will not be released for commercial, marketing, or other for-profit use. National-level vital records do not contain personally identifiable information, and therefore cannot be linked to other data at the individual level. Researchers can access public files online and must submit requests for any nonpublic files to the National Center for Health Statistics. To submit an application to NCHS, researchers must complete the NCHS Restricted Vital Statistics Data Request Application Form. As part of the application process, researchers must sign an NCHS Data Use Agreement (DUA).
Files received through the process above include geographic detail and approximate dates of vital events (e.g., if an individual’s DOB is Monday, January 1, 2016, the record released will read Monday, January 2016) rather than exact dates.
Gaining access to vital records with exact dates differs for federal and non-federal researchers. Federal researchers should follow the procedures described above for requesting nonpublic data and request exact dates. Non-federal researchers should follow the procedure above and must additionally gain approval from the NCHS Research Data Center (RDC). In the case of an approval, fees are imposed, the researcher is assigned an RDC Analyst, and the researcher is granted controlled access to vital records with exact dates.
In order to obtain vital records with personally identifiable information as well as dates, researchers must contact individual jurisdictions (50 states, Washington, DC, New York City, and US territories). These jurisdictions may have different policies and procedures.
The rest of this entry details the process for accessing nonpublic records with approximate dates. Note that neither the records with approximate dates nor the records with exact dates include sufficient personally identifiable information to allow researchers to link to individual-level study data.
Timeline for Access
It usually takes 4 - 6 weeks for the review of the application. After the application is approved, applicants sign the NCHS DUA and receive the data files. The entire process is expected to take 4 - 6 weeks. Too many concurrent requests or extraordinary events may cause delays, but applicants are notified under these circumstances.
Data files must be destroyed after the approved project period unless renewal is requested and approved.
Lag Time
Final public-use and restricted-use micro-data files are typically released on the following schedules:
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Birth files: 7-8 months after the end of a data year; for example, the 2018 files were released in July 2019
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Death (multiple-cause) files: 11-12 months after the end of a data year; for example, the 2017 files were released in December 2018
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Fetal death files: 12 months after the end of the data year
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Period linked birth/infant death files: 8 months after the release of the death files for a data year
Cost
Access to records is free.
Linking
National-level vital records do not contain personally identifiable information, and therefore cannot be linked to other data at the individual level. Data requests that include a strategy to attempt to link national-level vital records data to identified files will be denied. In order to obtain vital records with personally identifiable information for linking, researchers must work with individual states or territories.
Identifiers Available for Linking
- None.
Data Contents
Partial List of Variables
For birth records: birth month, year, and day of the week (e.g., Monday), mother’s age, mother’s race, father’s age, father’s race.
For death records: year of death, age group at death, race, sex, state and county of residence, and cause of death.
J-PAL Randomized Evaluations Using this Data Set
Unknown.
Other Research Using this Data Set
Almond, Douglas, Joseph J. Doyle, Amanda E. Kowalski, and Heidi Williams. “Estimating Marginal Returns to Medical Care: Evidence from At-Risk Newborns.” NBER Working Paper #14522, December 2008.
Kearney, Melissa S. and Phillip B. Levine. “Media Influences on Social Outcomes: The Impact of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant on Teen Childbearing.” NBER Working Paper #19795, January 2014.
Ludwig, Jens and Douglas L. Miller. 2007. “Does Head Start Improve Children's Life Chances? Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 122: 159-208. doi: 10.1162/qjec.122.1.159.