European Commission - Public Health: healthindicators.org

General information about this indicator

The indicator presented here is an ECHI shortlist indicator. The ECHI shortlist is a list of about 90 public health indicators, which has been developed by the European Commission together with the European Union Member States. Currently (2009-2011) a Joint Action for ECHIM is ongoing, which aims at implementing the ECHI shortlist. Twenty four European Union Member States and some other European countries are participating in the Joint Action (click here for the full list of participating countries). More information on ECHI and the Joint Action can be found at the ECHIM website. More information on the specifications of this indicator can be found in the indicator’s Documentation Sheet.

Indicator definition

Number of all live births in a given year divided by the number of person-years lived by the population in the same period, expressed per 1000 persons.

Source information

Eurostat, 2009. The data are available at the Eurostat website. For further information see Eurostat metadata.

These demographic data are obtained from National Statistical Offices. This source is the ECHIM preferred source.

Availability

Data are available for EU-27 and the rest of the countries participating in the Joint Action, and are updated annually.

Comparability between countries

In most countries the definition of a live birth matches the WHO definition, i.e., births of children that showed any sign of life (it is the number of births excluding stillbirths). Sometimes further criteria on birth weight and/or length of gestational period are added (Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Finland). Almost all countries have good or excellent registration of birth and death, but not all countries are able to produce reliable data on international migration. As a result average population numbers may be (slightly) inaccurate.

Comparability within countries

No remarkable changes in trends are reported.