Cook County Birth and Fertility Statistics by Race and Place

Cook County, excluding Chicago, provides data on births and fertility from the Illinois Department of Public Health. The dataset includes annual counts and rates for crude births, multiple births, fertility, and first births, stratified by race, ethnicity, age group, and place. It is curated by the Cook County Department of Public Health and is part of a seven-dataset series on county births.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in the Rate of Crude Birth and Rate of Fertility by Year and Race and Ethnicity to monitor population changes.
• Investigate the relationship between Average Age of First-Time Mothers and Count of First Birth across different Age Groups.
• Compare Count of Multiple Births and Rate of Multiple Births across different Place categories to identify geographic variations.
• Model demographic shifts using Count of Fertility and Count of Crude Birth as dependent variables against sociodemographic predictors available in related datasets.

Strengths

• Part of a structured series of seven related datasets on Cook County births, enabling cross-analysis.
• Data is disaggregated by multiple dimensions including Race and Ethnicity, Place, and Age Group.
• Includes both raw counts (e.g., Count of Crude Birth) and calculated rates (e.g., Rate of Fertility).

Limitations

• Counts below 5 and rates below 20 are masked with an asterisk, limiting analysis of rare events or small subgroups.
• Some columns contain data only for certain age groups, and rows overlap across variables, risking double-counting if aggregated incorrectly.
• Sample size (row count) and precise temporal coverage are not specified in the provided metadata.

Provenance

Source

Illinois Department of Public Health, curated by Cook County Department of Public Health.

Collection Method

Administrative public health records, aggregated and masked for confidentiality.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated metadata indicates 2026-01-27, suggesting ongoing maintenance.

Geography

Cook County, Illinois, United States, excluding the city of Chicago.