This variable records each person’s sex recorded at birth. Sex recorded at birth refers to the sex determined from characteristics observed at birth or during infancy.
All persons
| Code | Category |
|---|---|
| 1 | Male |
| 2 | Female |
Number of categories: 2
Responses are captured automatically from mark boxes, this reduces processing errors. The response options are ‘Male’, ‘Female’ and ‘Another term’. A person may select one option.
Data collected from the sex recorded at birth question will be reported in most Census releases using the binary categories of male and female. Decisions regarding the release of data from the ‘Another term’ category will be made following a thorough assessment of data quality.
Where a respondent has provided a ‘Male’ or ‘Female’, and ‘Another term’, response, the ‘Male’ or ‘Female’ response will be used to determine a binary sex. Otherwise, sex will be derived by a statistical process.
Binary sex is imputed when the question is not answered.
A question on sex has been included in every Census since 1911.
In 2026, with the introduction of a new question on gender, the existing sex question was revised to explicitly refer to a person’s sex recorded at birth. The response categories were updated to ‘Male’, ‘Female’ and ‘Another term’.
The output variable name has been updated to ‘Sex recorded at birth’ to reflect this conceptual change. The mnemonic and output categories remain unchanged.
