State-Level Vital Statistics Data

Vital records data, which may include information about births, deaths, fetal deaths, induced terminations of pregnancies, marriages, and divorces, are maintained by 57 different jurisdictions in the US. These include the 50 states, The District of Columbia, New York City, and five US territories (Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). Vital records information is collected from an array of local entities (hospitals, funeral homes, etc.) and sent to national agencies for the compilation of national statistics. However, legal authority over the data is maintained by these 57 state-level jurisdictions. Data requests should therefore be made to the relevant state-level jurisdiction.

Marriage and divorce records are considered public records in most jurisdictions, while birth and death records are much more likely to be considered confidential and exempt from public disclosure. For details about whether particular vital records are public in each state, see this website. It is worth noting that states that consider recent birth or death data to be public record often restrict associated health data, and therefore a data request may still be necessary. For instance, Montana makes death records publicly available but restricts access to information about the cause of death. Minnesota makes death records publicly available and includes cause of death, but restricts health information in publicly available birth records. Furthermore, while information about births in Minnesota when parents are married is made public, when parents are not married this data only becomes public if the mother grants permission. A 2018 report by Fitch et al. claims that, “in practice, this restricts public use data to about 90% of the total Minnesota birth cohort in recent years.” The rest of this entry will focus primarily on data access procedures for birth, death and fetal death records with full health information.

Data requests for identifiable birth, death, and fetal death records can generally be submitted to the respective state-level vital statistics office, which will typically be housed within the department of health and human services or other public health departments. Requests typically require a Data Use Agreement. This NCHS resource “Where to Write for Vital Records”  provides links to the office responsible for vital records data in each state or other vital records jurisdiction. 

For examples of access procedures in specific jurisdictions, see other J-PAL catalog entries on obtaining vital statistics information in Colorado, Massachusetts, New York City, Oregon, and South Carolina. See also the “Compendium of Administrative Data Sources” by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation for access procedures in California. If a particular jurisdiction doesn’t have access procedures for research requests online, they may have relevant information in vital statistics legislation. As one example, the text below from North Carolina’s General Statutes, Chapter 130A Article 4 on Vital Statistics outlines who is able to access the data and for what purpose:

Copies of or abstracts from any computer or microform database which contains individual-specific health or medical birth data, whether the database is maintained by the Department, a local health department, or any other public official, shall be provided only to an individual requesting his or her own data, a person authorized by that individual, or a person who will use the information for medical research purposes. The State Registrar shall adopt rules providing for the use of this information for medical research purposes. The rules shall, at a minimum, require a written description of the proposed use of the data, including protocols for protecting confidentiality of the data.

All vital records jurisdictions use an Electronic Birth Registration System (EBRS) for all processing related to birth certificates, and nearly all jurisdictions (52) use an Electronic Death Registration System (EDRS) for processing related to deaths. Requested data will typically be shared in the form of electronic records, as opposed to hard copies of certificates.

There is a high degree of uniformity with data collection across states.
Vital statistics offices work closely with the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) under the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program (VSCP) to ensure a high degree of uniformity across jurisdictions. States and other vital statistics jurisdictions base their record collection processes on standardized certificates developed for reporting births, deaths, marriages, divorces, fetal deaths, and induced terminations of pregnancies. These certificates undergo periodic revisions (every 10 to 15 years) and while individual jurisdictions have some autonomy with implementation, they typically adopt new reporting standards with a high degree of fidelity. States are funded to report required data elements to NCHS. As a result of this cooperative system, vital records data across jurisdictions should be highly comparable.

The NCHS also develops and maintains the Model State Vital Statistics Law and Regulations to provide guidance to individual jurisdictions as they update their own vital records legislations and further promote uniformity among “definitions, registration practices, disclosure and issuance procedures, and in many other functions that comprise a State system of vital statistics.” The Model State Vital Statistics Law and Regulations also provides guidance about vital records jurisdictions making their data accessible to researchers upon request. Most, if not all, jurisdictions seem to follow this guidance and make their data accessible to researchers.

Considerations for requesting vital records data at the state level vs national level.
Some national vital data can be obtained through a request to the NCHS.  This might be worth considering if you need data from multiple jurisdictions. Birth records obtained through the NCHS will be deidentified, and unless the request comes from a federal employee, dates will be approximated. To obtain personally identifiable birth records and to be able to link vital records data to your study data or other data sources, vital statistics must be requested from the state, city or territory with legal jurisdiction. See the National Vital Statistics Birth and Death Data catalog entry for more information about accessing de-identified birth, death and fetal data records from the NCHS.

If only death records are needed, these can be requested with personally identifiable information from the NCHS through the National Death Index, a database created specifically to assist researchers with medical and health studies. For more information on the access procedures, see the National Death Index catalog entry.

Note that the NCHS once collected marriage and divorce records but discontinued this collection in 1995. More recent marriage and divorce records must be obtained from individual states.