Chicago Births, 1937-2023

October 18, 2024

For racial and ethnic groups, we have data starting in 1979.

Total Fertility Rate #

Total Fertility Rate is the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime if:

• she were to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates through her lifetime
• she were to live from birth until the end of her reproductive life.

Sources #

Detailed data on babies born to Chicago residents come from a number of sources:

• The Illinois Department of Public Health publishes demographic details on babies born to Chicago residents by year from 2009 through the present.
• The Chicago Department of Public Health published data on total births from 1999-2008.
• Births by race and ethnicity from 2009-2014 were received from a FOIA request.
• CDPH, Births in Chicago, 1999-2009
• Birth data from 1995-2004 was published in a 2007 Chicago Department of Health Report
• IDPH, Births by County of Residence, 1990-1999
• Illinois Data Portal, All Live Births In Illinois, 1989-2009
• birth outcomes and infant mortality in Chicago, 2006
• Total Births by Race in Chicago
• Births from 1937-1939 come from the resident-birth tables in Part II of Vital Statistics of the United States (1937, 1938, 1939), the first years births were tabulated by the mother’s place of residence.
• Births from 1940-1958 come from the Illinois Department of Public Health’s Health Statistics Bulletins (1949-62): “Live Births by Place of Residence: Illinois, 1940-1948” and a 1950 summary for 1949. The 1950-1958 counts, by sex, are from Table 2 of the 1960 Vital Statistics Illinois (1958-62).
• Births from 1959-1967, by age of mother, come from Table A of the Illinois Department of Public Health’s annual Vital Statistics Illinois (1958-62 and 1963-67 volumes).
• Births from 1968-1989, and births by age of mother through 1999, are calculated from the National Center for Health Statistics natality files. The 1968-1971 files are a 50% sample.
• For the total fertility rates from 1959-1999, the number of Chicago women at each age comes from the 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010 censuses, interpolated between census years. Asian births were inconsistently coded before 1987, so the Asian fertility rate starts in 1987.
• Published total fertility rates come from the Chicago Department of Public Health’s Chicago Health Atlas and the Illinois Department of Public Health’s population projections.

I’ve compiled this data into a spreadsheet.