You asked
Please could you tell me the following;
What is the mean age women give birth in the UK for the last 50 years?
The age women are having their first baby?
The maternal age of women with pregnancies/ live births?
The ages of women having second/third/fourth etc babies
We said
Thank you for your request.
We are responsible for collating birth statistics for England and Wales. National Records of Scotland and Northern Ireland Statistics Research Agency are responsible for births data in Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively.
What is the mean age women give birth in the UK for the last 50 years?
The standardised mean age of mother can be found in table 1 of the birth summary tables from 1938 to 2019 or Table 4 of our parents' characteristics release.
The age women are having their first baby?
Table 4 of our parents' characteristics release shows the standardised mean age of mother by birth order.
The maternal age of women with pregnancies/ live births?
Live births by mothers age can be found in Table 2 of our birth summary tables.
Conceptions by woman's age can be found in Table 1 of our conceptions release.
The ages of women having second/third/fourth etc babies?
Table 4 of parents' characteristics also shows average of mother for second, third and fourth births.
Provisional births data 2020
The annual births dataset for 2020 is provisionally scheduled for release August 2021 Therefore, the requested births data for 2020 is exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. Furthermore, as a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.
We published 'Provisional births in England and Wales' on 7th December 2020, this dataset provides birth statistics between January and September and how they compared to the same period in recent years. This dataset does focuses more on provisional birth statistics rather than characteristics of the parents. However, it may be of interest to you.
If you would like to discuss these statistics further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.