Felix Barbalet

Australian's are unique - our culture and attitudes make us so. But exactly how unique are we - how many people share your actual birthday?

This project seeks to answer that question, by funding the Australian Bureau of Statistics to release the daily number of births, by state, between 2001 and 2012. If we go $815 over our target ($1865 total) we'll be able to get the data for 1975 to 2012!

What do other countries do?
If we look across the world, the US has made available the number of births by day from 1969 to 2008.

The ABS publishes aggregate birth statistics but not the daily number of births.

Why does this cost money?
The ABS does not currently publish this information, and they operate on a cost recovery basis. We have obtained a quote from the ABS to make the data available under a Creative Commons License.

Why is this important?
While researchers could use data from overseas, fertility and birth statistics are likely to be specific to culture, climate and social factors, that mean the Australian data is likely to be different.

Has anyone else made this request?
Yes. A couple of years ago, Australian Economists Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh published research using a similar data set - unfortunately Dr. Gans has advised me that the license they obtained the data under does not allow them to republish it. Further it is now a number of years out of date.

Overseas there was a lot of interest in this type of data, and this Infographic went viral:


We need the ABS to release daily births data to be able to replicate this type of analysis for Australia.

The breakdown is as follows:
If we raise $1050 that will fund the ABS to release the data for 2001 to 2012
If we raise $1865 that will fund the ABS to release the data for 1975 to 2012

The funds will be used to pay the ABS to release the data. Any funds received greater than required to fund the ABS (ie anything more than $1865) will be donated to the Open Knowledge Foundation Australia.

We will not be retaining any of the funds ourselves.

As with all data projects, there are risks and challenges, such as:

Risk: The ABS is not able to deliver the data as they have stated in their Information Consultancy quote to me

Risk mitigation: I am relying on the ABS to make available the data in an accurate and timely manner, and as Australia's official statistical agency, I hope that this minimises this risk.

Challenge: The data might not match previously published aggregated data of this type due to rounding errors, confidentiality requirements and the fact that the published ABS data on births uses date of registration, while this data will show date of birth.

Challenge mitigation: This does not reduce the value of this disaggregated data.