Period Linked Birth and Infant Death Data

Previously the microdata for each year of the Period Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Set, included in the following tables, consisted of three separate data files. The numerator/denominator set referred to below can be used to compute infant mortality rates.

1. Linked Deaths - The numerator files include deaths to all infants in that same calendar year for which the death certificate can be linked to a birth certificate in the denominator file.
2. Linked Births - The denominator files contain all births occurring in a given calendar year.
3. Unlinked Deaths - The unlinked files include death certificate information for all the infant deaths that cannot be linked to a birth in the corresponding birth file.

Datasets located below are also separated into two sections:

• U.S. Data Files - Prior to 1972, data are based on a 50-percent sample of birth certificates from all States. Beginning in 1972, data are based on a 100-percent sample of birth certificates from some states and on a 50-percent sample from the remaining States. The number of States from which 100 percent of the records are used has increased from 6 in 1972 to all States and the District of Columbia in 1985.
• U.S. Territory Data - Birth data from the U.S. Territories Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are available on a separate file beginning in 1994. In 1998, American Samoa and the Northern Marianas were added to the U.S. Territories files.

Demographic data include variables such as date of birth, age and educational attainment of parents, marital status, live-birth order, race, sex, and geographic area. Health data include items such as birth weight, gestation, prenatal care, attendant at birth, and Apgar score. Geographic data includes state, county, and city of mother's residence and state and county of the place of birth. City and county data are available only for areas with a population of 250,000 or more. Refer to the documentation below for more detail.

Other birth data available are Birth Cohort Linked Birth and Infant Death Data, Natality Data, as part of the Perinatal Mortality Data, and Matched Multiple Births Data, 1995-1998. After 1999, the Linked Birth/Infant Death data is included as part of the Perinatal Mortality Data set.

SEER provides helpful U.S. Population data for 1969 on.

NBER affiliates can access this and other data through the NBER computing system.  Files can be located using the directory path of each download link replacing "https://data.nber.org/" with  "/homes/data/". For example, these nvss/linkpeco/ and the older linkpe datasets can be found under "/homes/data/nvss/linkpeco/" and "/homes/data/linkpe/" on the internal NBER computer cluster. For more information on the data available on the internal server see NBER Internal Data Collection page.