IN THIS ISSUE
ABOUT THIS ISSUE
This publication brings together statistics for live births and fertility in Australia. Data refer to births registered during the calendar year shown, unless otherwise stated. State or territory relates to the state or territory of usual residence, unless otherwise stated.
CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE
This issue contains a revision to the Estimated Resident Population (ERP) and resulting birth rates for 2013. Data for 2013 now have the status of revised and will not change until ERP is rebased after the 2016 Census.
Parity (number of previous children of the mother) data for 2014 is not available for New South Wales due to data quality concerns. As national level parity data already excludes Victoria and Queensland, 2014 data for Australia is also not available. See Explanatory Note 51 for further information.
The ABS is currently reviewing the methodology used to produce 2001 to 2010 births data at the Statistical Area Levels 2, 3 and 4 (SA2, SA3 and SA4). The review will better align births data for 2001 to 2010 with that from 2011 onwards. Investigations by the ABS suggest that in most cases the changes to 2001 to 2010 data will be minimal. The results of this review are planned to be published by June 2016. The number of births for 2011 to 2014 will not be affected.
Rates and medians in data cubes 2 and 3 are calculated for each year and then averaged over the three-year period ending in the reference year. Due to this review, these data for 2011 and 2012 are not published in this issue.
To protect confidentiality, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has introduced a technique to randomly adjust cells with small values in Births, Australia, 2014. This technique has been used for Causes of Death statistics since 2007 and allows the ABS to publish more data by removing the need to suppress cells. Cells with 0 values have not been affected by randomisation. The technique has been applied to 2014 registration based data only, and all years of occurrence based data. It has not been applied to the median age calculations or any sub-state data. Previously published data will not be republished using this randomisation method.
2014 POPULATION USED IN THIS RELEASE
All ERPs for 30 June 2014 (preliminary) are based on the results of the 2011 Census and are the latest available ERPs at the specified level. As a consequence of using the latest available ERPs for 2014, state and territory totals in sub-state data cubes are slightly different from those in other data cubes. This does not affect births data. The ERPs used in this release are as follows:
ROUNDING
Calculations as shown in the commentary sections of this publication are based on unrounded figures. Calculations undertaken by data users using rounded figures may differ from those published.
Every effort is made to minimise error by working closely with data providers, including supporting the careful design of forms, training of processing staff, and efficient data processing procedures.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The efforts of Registries of Births, Deaths and Marriages to improve the data quality, coverage and timeliness of birth registration information, processes and systems are noted and valued by the ABS.
CONFIDENTIALITY
Where necessary, tables have had small values suppressed or randomised to protect confidentiality. As a result, sums of components may not add exactly to totals. These adjustments allow for a greater amount of detailed data to be released, and as they are small, do not affect the utility of the data.
INQUIRIES
For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.
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