How many babies are born every day?
- 361,700per day
- 15,070per hour
- 251per minute
- 4.2per second
This is an average, not a count. Births are not spread evenly across the year or the day: they are slightly seasonal, and hospital scheduling makes weekday mornings busier than weekend nights. No one counts the world’s births as they happen; the daily figure is an annual estimate divided by 365.2425.
A day’s babies, by country
| Country | Per day | Per hour | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| India | 63,600 | 2,650 | 23,200,000 |
| China | 24,400 | 1,020 | 8,910,000 |
| Nigeria | 20,600 | 857 | 7,510,000 |
| Pakistan | 18,800 | 785 | 6,880,000 |
| Indonesia | 12,300 | 511 | 4,480,000 |
| DR Congo | 12,000 | 498 | 4,370,000 |
| Ethiopia | 11,200 | 468 | 4,110,000 |
| United States | 10,000 | 417 | 3,660,000 |
How this has changed
In the year 1, an estimated 25,450 babies were born worldwide each day, about 14 times fewer than today, from a world of roughly ~231.4 million people. The daily figure rose slowly for eighteen centuries, then sharply, and has now begun to fall: the world passed its busiest year for births in 2012.
Watch the daily figure change on the map
Related questions
- How many babies are born every second?
- How many babies are born each year?
- Where are most babies born?
Figures on this page are generated from the same dataset the map draws, and update whenever it does. See the methodology for how each era is estimated and how much it should be trusted.